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HISTORY OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 




NATHANItL HUbbtLL 



HISTORY 



OF THE 



NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 

FOR 

ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
1819-1919 

COMPILED FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES 



WILLIAM WAY 

Rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Charleston 

and Ninth President of the 

Neiv England Society 



CHARLESTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 

1 920 



.Nl7f 



Copyright 1920 By 

The New England Society of Charleston 

South Carolina 



Published April 1920 



©CI.A576052 



m^"\ i iS20 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Press 

Chicago, lUlnois. U.S.A. 



INTRODUCTION 

The New England Society having decided 
with its usual good judgment that its hundredth 
anniversary should be marked by the publication 
of a history of the Society and its century of use- 
fulness, its president, the Reverend William Way, 
to whom the preparation of the history was 
intrusted, has requested me, as president of the 
South Carolina Historical Society, to write a few 
words by way of introduction. 

The president has wisely chosen to allow, 
wherever possible, the members and guests of the 
Society and their contemporaries to describe in 
their own words the work done by the Society 
during its life. The book will therefore be found 
a perfect treasure-house of the thoughts, cus- 
toms, manners, and speech, during that period, of 
the city of Charleston, and of a much wider circle 
outside its limits. For the Society has been much 
more than a local benevolent and social associa- 
tion, great as its work has been in the field of good- 
fellowship and charitable work. It is next to the 
oldest New England society in existence, and is 



vi INTRODUCTION 

known and respected throughout the United 
States and wherever there are descendants of the 
Pilgrim Fathers. Indeed, many of the speakers 
at the anniversary celebration seem to find it an 
interesting and attractive fact that a flourishing 
society of New England men should exist in a 
state like South Carolina and in a city like 
Charleston. Yet those who know our city well 
know that we have always admired those who 
boldly think for themselves, even when differing 
in opinion from most of the community. Securely 
intrenched in our own views, we have rather liked 
and encouraged frank criticism by distinguished 
men from elsewhere. As was said to a visitor 
invited to speak at one of the annual banquets, 
and who seemed doubtful whether his somewhat 
heretical political views would be acceptable, 
"Whatever you say will be acceptable, provided 
you say it well." 

It was the New England Society which first 
introduced in Charleston the practice of inviting 
men like Daniel Webster, William Everett, Josiah 
Quincy, George F. Hoar, and Charles Francis 
Adams to join with our own citizens, such as 
Chief Justice Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin, William 
Crafts, James L. Petigru, Professor John Edwards 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Holbrook, and the Reverend Dr. Samuel Gilman, 
in celebrating the anniversaries of the Society. It 
was a good custom, and has been followed by 
other societies. Let us hope that it will always be 
continued. The sketches of the lives of the presi- 
dents and other distinguished members of the 
Society, terse and well written, will serve to recall 
the names of men thoroughly identified with the 
life of Charleston, and generally eminently suc- 
cessful in business and professional life, and of 
others well known in science and literature. Of 
the eight presidents of the Society in one hundred 
years, all died in office, and their average age at 
death was seventy-eight years. The combina- 
tion of conservatism and vigor is typical of the 

Society itself. 

Joseph W. Barnwell 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Origin and Organization - - - i 
Purpose -------8 

The Presidents 25 

DlSTlNGXnSHED MEMBERS - - - - 75 

The Visit of Daniel Webster - - i88 

The Civil War 211 

Famous Dinners 268 

The Centennial Celebration - - 276 

Index .-_.--- 301 



ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION 

The official date of the organization of the New 
England Society of Charleston, South Carolina, is 
the sixth of January, eighteen hundred and nine- 
teen. This fact is verified by the following adver- 
tisement which appeared simultaneously in two 
leading newspapers published in Charleston on 
January 6, 1819, the Courier and the Patriot and 
Commercial Advertiser: 

New England Society. — A meeting of these gentle- 
men who have subscribed for the purpose of forming a 
charitable and benevolent society under the above name 
is requested this evening at half past six o'clock at the 
Carolina Coffee House for the purpose of organizing the 
same. 

The Society has actually been in session for 
one hundred years. It has taken a recess at the 
close of each meeting, but has never adjourned in 
its entire history. In this respect the New Eng- 
land Society of Charleston is unique among all 
other American organizations of a similar char- 
acter. 

The Society was organized at the Carolina 
Coffee House, located on the corner of Tradd 



.2 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Street and Bedon's Alley, which was one of the 
most prominent sections of the city. This coffee 
house was the social rendezvous of Charleston 
at the time. The great social functions and 
entertainments were held here. When President 
Monroe visited Charleston, just a few months 
after the organization of the New England Society, 
he was entertained by the Society of the Cincin- 
nati at this famous resort. The concerts and 
balls given by the St. Cecilia Society were for 
many years held at the Carolina Coffee House. 

Whereas the official date of the organization 
of the New England Society of Charleston was 
January 6, 1819, this, however, was not the date 
of the origin of the Society. For a number of 
years previous to eighteen hundred and nineteen 
the Society had been in existence. The New 
Englanders who had settled in Charleston met 
regularly on Forefathers' Day for the purpose of 
recalling the virile virtues of their ancestors, for 
good-fellowship, and to render aid to their less 
fortunate brothers. Such gatherings were held 
at the homes of prominent New Englanders or at 
the Carolina Coffee House. The citation which 
follows from The City Gazette and Commercial 
Daily Advertiser of January 8, 1819, is conclusive 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 3 

evidence that the New England Society of 
Charleston existed prior to January 6, 18 19. 

The New England Society. — At a meeting of a 
number of citizens who had previously associated them- 
selves for the purpose of forming a charitable and benevo- 
lent society with this title, held at the Carolina Cofifee 
House on Wednesday evening last, January 6, 1819, the 
following-named gentlemen were elected ofl&cers for the 
ensuing year: 

Nathai>iiel Russell, President 
Joseph Winthrop, Vice-President 
F. Shaw Crocker, Secty. and Treas. 

The following excerpt from an address deliv- 
ered by the Rev. Dr. C. S. Vedder, for a gener- 
ation president of the New England Society, 
indicates the character of the early celebrations: 

A handful of New Englanders, who had been snowed 
out from under the lee side of Plymouth Rock, or who for 
other causes had decided to seek a warmer and more con- 
genial chmate under the balmy skies of Carolina's fair 
coast, and to cast their fortunes with the Sunny South, 
got together and organized the New England Society. 
Among them were the foimders of some of the sturdiest 
and most devoted CaroHna families. The New Eng- 
landers who came to Charleston in those days were gener- 
ally of the sturdy sort, men who transplanted themselves 
to the fertile soil of the Palmetto State with the intention 
of growing up with her destiny, and they did it, as the 



4 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

roll of the Society will show. The New Englanders fell 
into the very natural and patriotic habit of gathering 
around a cheerful fireplace in one of the old-time inns, or 
at the residence of one of the members on "Forefathers' 
Day," and recalling anew, in pledges of steaming punch, 
the glorious memories of the Mayflower and her hardy 
and God-fearing passengers, who on that dark and freez- 
ing day in December first landed on Plymouth Rock after 
their long journey to the promised land of religious 
freedom. 

There is another line of evidence which strongly 
indicates the existence of the Society prior to the 
date of official organization, namely, the fact that 
the Society had forty-seven members on its mem- 
bership roll at its meeting, January 6, 1819, and 
that it added twelve more members to the list 
within a few months. This is strong evidence, 
especially when it is taken into consideration that 
there was a comparatively small number of New 
Englanders in Charleston at the time. However, 
according to certified dates, "The New England 
Society in the City of New York instituted 
A.D. 1805," is the oldest New England Society in 
the United States. This places the New England 
Society of Charleston second in point of antiquity. 

The roster of the original members and the 
Act of Incorporation follow: 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 



ORIGINAL 

Nathaniel Russell 
Joseph Winthrop 
Doddridge Crocker 
George Gibbes 
Timothy Edwards 

A. S. WiLLINGTON 

Matthew Bridge 
James L. Child 
Jerry Walter 
Philip Robinson 
Joseph Manning 
Arthur Savage 
John Goodwin 
Nathan Foster 
Zadock Gilman 
Roswell Sprague 
Francis Shaw Crocker 
Samuel H. Skinner 
E. Cheney, Jr. 
Henry J. Jones 
WiswALL Jones 
Joseph Clarke 
Horace Bernard 
Daniel Perkins 



MEMBERS 

George W. Prescott 
Samuel N. Bishop 
David W. Leland 
Isaac Thayer 
John H. Benson 
Samuel Chadwick 
Robert Maxwell 
George Gibbon 
Joseph Tyler 
George Dodd 
Thomas G. Woodward 
Silas Howe 
Benjamin F. Dunkin 
John Read 
Henry Wheeler 
josiah s. lovell 
John Eggleston 
William Crafts 
John Reed 

George W. Eggleston 
Daniel Parish 
Baxter O. Minott 
Jonathan Coit 



6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

ACT OF INCORPORATION 

PASSED AT A MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 

THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, HELD IN 

DECEMBER, 182O 

Whereas, Joseph Winthrop, Joseph Manning, 
Henry J. Jones, Doddridge Crocker, A. S. Will- 
ington, George Gibbes, and William Crafts, by their 
petition, in behalf of themselves and a number of others, 
prayed that they may be incorporated by the name and 
style of the New England Society. 

Be it Therefore Enacted by the Authority Aforesaid, 
That all those persons who now are, or hereafter may 
become, members of the said Society, shall be, and they 
are hereby, incorporated as a body politic and corporate, 
and shall be known in deed and in law by the name of 
the New England Society. 

And Be it Further Enacted by the Authority Aforesaid, 
That a succession of officers and members, to be appointed 
or elected in such manner and according to such form as 
may be provided by such rules and regulations as they 
may, from time to time, ordain and establish for the good 
government of the said Society; and that they shall have 
a common seal, with power to alter or change the same as 
often as they may deem expedient and necessary. 

And Be it Further Enacted by the Authority Aforesaid, 
That the said corporation shall be capable in law to take 
by donation, devise, or purchase, any estate, real or per- 
sonal, and to have, hold, and possess the same in perpe- 
tuity or for a term of years: Provided, The annual rent or 
amount thereof shall not exceed the sum of one thousand 
dollars; and to lease, alien, or dispose of the same, in fee 
or for term of years, in any way that it may deem proper; 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA ^ 

and that the said corporation may sue and be sued, plead 
and be impleaded, answer and be answered unto, in any 
Court of Law or Equity in this State. 

In the Senate House, the twentieth day of December, 
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
and twenty, and in the forty-fifth year of the Inde- 
pendence of the United States of America. 

Benjamin Huger, 

President of the Senate 

Patrick Noble, 

Speaker of the House of Representatives 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



PURPOSE 

The motive which inspired men to organize the 
New England Society was love. The sublime pur- 
pose which called it into being was charity. The 
birth of the New England Society was the humane 
response to a great need. 

It is an interesting coincidence that the Society 
was organized on the Epiphany, the great mission- 
ary festival of the Christian church. The first 
committee appointed at the initial meeting of the 
Society was a committee on charity. The fol- 
lowing members formed the committee: Robert 
Maxwell, Doddridge Crocker, A. S. Willington, 
George Gibbes, J. S. Lovell, Timothy Edwards, 
William Crafts. 

It would have been impossible at the time to 
call together seven more representative citizens of 
Charleston. The year 1819 experienced a very 
severe industrial and financial crisis, which 
extended over the entire country and which con- 
tinued for a number of years. In 1820 and in 
1 82 1 the United States government was com- 
pelled to borrow money at a rate of interest as 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 9 

high as six per cent. The condition in Charleston 
was no exception to that of the country in general. 
There was therefore a pressing need for a benevo- 
lent organization such as the New Englanders 
formed. The appeals for assistance were of a 
most worthy character. 

One of the newspapers of Charleston published 
the following appeal, which was typical of the 
time: 

We are requested to call the attention of the charitable 
to the situation of a poor family from Boston, Massachu- 
setts, reduced to the deepest distress for want of neces- 
sary subsistence. They arrived here in the early part of 
last summer, but were compelled to remove, in conse- 
quence of the sickness which soon after prevailed, to 
Haddrell's Point. All the means which their little prop- 
erty afforded them of sustaining life are now exhausted, 
and being without friends, they are induced to make this 
appeal to the commiseration of the liberal and feeling 
inhabitants of this place. Donations will be received at 
this ofi&ce. 

An appeal to the New England Society from 
the Charleston Port Society also emphasized the 
need for such a charitable organization : 

Among the sailors to whom we are constantly minis- 
tering, especially those sick in our hospitals, we find a large 
proportion are natives of the New England States, more 
especially from the states of Maine and Massachusetts. 



lo THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

These men are found generally upon the coasting vessels 
that frequent this port, and during the summer are 
especially subject to fevers and other diseases incident 
to our climate. To supply their needs after they have 
been discharged from the hospital and are convalescing, 
and until they are able to ship again, requires an outlay 
of money by the Port Society which it cannot easily spare, 
however willing they may be to do so. 

In view of these facts, I take the liberty, as chaplain 
of the Port Society and also as a member of the New 
England Society, to appeal to you for aid to enable us to 
carry on our work without interruption, and to be in a 
position to aid all who need help, especially such as come 
from the New England States. As all moneys are care- 
fully disbursed under ray own immediate supervision, 
you can rest assured that whatever amount you may be 
pleased to donate will be worthily bestowed, and we will 
be only the agent in furthering the great aim of your 
noble Society — the aid and comfort to the sons of New 
England. 

At this point it will be of interest to give a 
few illustrations of the kind of charity dispensed 
by the New England Society, as shown from the 
reports of the committee on charity: 

In discharge of the important trusts committed to 
their keeping, your committee have adhered closely to 
the rule and objects that governed the original founders 
of this Society, in the relief for such of the sons or their 
descendants of New England as might be arrested by the 
hand of disease or chill penury in this city. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA ii 

During the past year, many applications were made 
for relief. A close examination of these applicants satis- 
fied your committee that they were natives of New 
England or descendants and proper subjects for aid or 
assistance. Your committee has drawn upon the treas- 
urer for one hundred and twenty-five dollars: one hun- 
dred for the relief in part of the oldest and esteemed 
member, stricken down by the "hand of disease," and 
twenty-five dollars to aid the widow of a deceased 
member to remove to New York, with the prospect of 
earning a support as nurse in one of the hospitals in 
that city. 

The committee on charity paid forty-five dollars for 
the funeral expenses of the late I. C. Duggan, who was a 
native of New England, and buried in our Society grounds. 
He died in destitute circumstances. 

The committee on charity reported the case of Albert 
Snow, of Providence, Rhode Island, who was cared for 
here while sick, and his body sent home by the Society 
after his death. 

The Reverend Charles S. Vedder, D.D., was reduced 
in financial circumstances during the last years of his life. 
The New England Society, of which he had been the dis- 
tinguished president, met the emergency by paying his 
house rent for a number of years. 

March j, 184'/. The Society resolved to dispense 
with the customary quarterly supper in June and Sep- 
tember, and to donate the cost of same, one hundred 
dollars, to the distressed poor of Ireland and Scotland. 

December 6, 1854. The Society, by resolution, 
donated one hundred dollars to the Calhoun Monument 
Association. 



12 



THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



December 26, 18 j8. The treasurer paid twenty-five 
dollars toward the erection of a monument to the late 
Reverend Samuel Oilman, as authorized by resolution of 
the Society, June 2, 1858. 

March i, i8y6. The sum of one hundred dollars was 
donated for the Jasper monument, to be unveiled by the 
Palmetto Guard, June 28, 1876. 

Jmie 20, i8y6. The sum of three hundred dollars was 
donated toward the entertainment of the Boston Light 
Infantry and the Old Ouard of New York, whilst visiting 
this city in the interests of a restored Union. 

March 6, i8y8. The sum of twenty-five dollars was 
donated toward the bust of William Oilmore Simms, in 
response to a request from the Honorable W. D. Porter, 
chairman of the committee. 

December 22, 1884. The sum of twenty-five dollars 
was donated to the Christmas tree for the poor. 



SPECIAL DONATIONS TO THE SOCIETY 



September, 1820 Nathaniel Russell 
December 10, 1822 Mrs. Russell 



Edward Thwing 
Robert Maxwell 



Five hundred 
dollars 

Twenty 
dollars 

Ten dollars 

One thousand 
two hun- 
dred dollars 

One thousand 
dollars 
March 31, 1862 Rev. Jonathan Cole One hundred 

dollars 



January, 1836 
March 16, 1850 



February 19, 1862 A. S. WiUington 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 13 

It remains to give an account of the Society's 
noblest act of piety and charity, namely, the 
erection of a monument to the sons of New 
England at Magnolia Cemetery and the dedica- 
tion of a section of that sacred domain as a burial 
place for New Englanders and their descendants. 

This great work of charity was conceived in 
1852 and consummated in 187 1. The service of 
dedication took place in the beautiful city of 
the dead the afternoon of July 26, 187 1. The 
account ensuing is essentially from the minutes of 
the Society and from the Charleston Daily Courier 
of July 27, 187 1. The dedicatory prayer was 
offered by the Reverend W. C. Dana, a member of 
the Society. The address of Dr. Robert Lebby, 
Sr., chairman of the committee, followed. Dr. 
Lebby said in part: 

" We are this day assembled in this * City of the 
Dead' to dedicate a section of this silent domain 
to New England Society charity — a virtue which 
has always stood forth in bold relief, and confined 
not only to this Society, but common to all similar 
societies in this 'City by the Sea.' 

"The selection and purchase of a section in this 
'City of the Dead' was introduced to the notice of 
the New England Society in December, 1852. 



14 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

The committee appointed at that time, with one 
exception, have departed and gone to ' that bourne 
from whence no traveler ever returneth.' At a 
meeting of the Society held June 2, 1869, the sub- 
ject was again called up from the journal and a 
committee appointed, consisting of Dr. Robert 
Lebby, A. H. Hayden, and Frederick Richards, to 
carry out the original intention of the New Eng- 
land Society of providing a final resting spot for 
indigents and others, natives of New England, 
and their descendants, who might die in this 
vicinity," 

At a meeting of the Society on December i, 
1869, Dr. R. Lebby, chairman of the committee, 
read the following report to the Society : 

The committee appointed June 2, 1869, to select a lot 
or lots at Magnolia Cemetery, for interring deceased 
indigent members of this Society and others, respectfully 
report that they have discharged the duty assigned them 
and selected three lots, as per plat annexed; and believe 
the same can be obtained for three hundred dollars. 

The site selected is directly in front of the Orphan 
Asylum lots and is an eligible location for the New Eng- 
land Society. 

The committee respectfully recommend to the Society 
to purchase the lots and place them under the care of the 
committee on charity, or a special committee to be 
known as the Cemetery Committee of the New England 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 15 

Society and that they be authorized, if the lots are pur- 
chased, to have them cleared and cleaned up. 
Respectfully submitted 

Robert Lebby 
A. H. Hayden 
F. Richards 

The report was unanimously adopted, and the 
same committee was authorized to complete the 
purchase and turn over the charge of the lots to 
the committee on charity. 

On March 9, 1869, the committee reported 
that the purchase of the lots had been concluded, 
and that they would be enclosed with a wild orange 
hedge. The committee also submitted a plan for 
a monument. It was resolved that the committee 
on charity be authorized to mature a plan and 
furnish an estimate of the cost of a suitable monu- 
ment, and to report at the next meeting, June 2, 
1870. 

The committee on charity submitted a plan 
for a monument to be erected in Magnolia Ceme- 
tery; also, a letter from the Plummer Granite 
Company bearing on the cost. 

On motion of Mr. Richardson it was 

Resolved, That the subject of the monument be referred 
to the committee on charity, with full power to act as in 
their judgment seemed best. 



1 6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

The committee on charity was composed of 
the following gentlemen: Dr. R. Lebby, L. T. 
Potter, A. H. Hayden, D. F. Flemmg, E. W. 
Edgerton, C. R. Brewster, J. R. Read. 

"The monument manufactured by the Plum- 
mer Granite Company cost, including all neces- 
sary expenses, $2,000. It is made of solid New 
England granite and consists of an octagonal 
shaft or column resting on four quadrilateral, 
bases. On one side of the base is the inscription 
in raised letters, 'New England Society, 1819.' 
The grounds are surrounded and fenced in by a 
granite fence, at the entrance of which are the 
letters 'N.E.S.' raised from the granite. 

"The ground has been opened to receive for 
the first interment the body of Mr. Edward J. 
Norris, stranger, born at Astoria, Long Island, 
July 4, 1839, who died in Charleston, May 17, 
1870; and again to receive into its bosom the 
body of Dr. John T. Cole, son of Reverend 
Jonathan J. E. E. Cole, of Newburyport, Massa- 
chusetts, who died in the city of Charleston on 
January 3, 1871." 

The duties assigned to the committee having 
been completed, the corner stone was laid with 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 17 

impressive ceremony. The chairman, Dr. Lebby, 
dehvered the following address: 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New 
England Society, here is your cemetery, enclosed 
with New England granite, emblematic of Plym- 
outh Rock, upon which our forefathers first landed 
on this western shore. 

"There will stand your monument, as soon as 
you deposit into its foundation this jar, containing 
a copy of the constitution and names of the 
founders and members of the New England Society 
and other relics, with the newspapers of the day. 
A granite column will surmount this base. At 
this entrance, the 'N.E.S.' will inform the visitor 
that this is the final resting-place in South Caro- 
lina of indigent and unfortunate New Englanders 
and their descendants, who die here in a strange 
land but not among strangers. 

"Here, Mr. President, you behold the fruit of 
the labor of that band of kind-hearted and noble 
-spirits, sons of New England, assembled in this 
city of Charleston, on January 6, a.d. 181 9, for 
the twofold purpose of keeping alive in their 
minds the memory of the land of their birth and 
the institutions handed them from their fathers. 



i8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Another, a higher object with them, was to organ- 
ize an efficient system of relief for such of the sons 
of New England as might be arrested by the hand 
of disease or chill of penury in this city. Ani- 
mated by these pure and holy sentiments, directed 
to the same great end, the different elements of 
which our Society is composed harmonize to pro- 
duce one noble result. And the steady increase of 
our numbers, the cordial co-operation which exists 
among us, show that in emulating the example of 
our Pilgrim Fathers in all things good we follow 
them not when leading to narrow and sectional 
conclusions. 

"In the first assembly, we find recorded the 
names of Nathaniel Russell, Joseph Winthrop, 
Doddridge Crocker, David W. Leland, A. S. Will- 
ington, B. F. Dunkin, and others of a kindred 
spirit. 

" Of that noble band of gentlemen in the provi- 
dence of Almighty God, but one remains to wit- 
ness the triumphant progress of the institution 
which they first put into operation. 'Death has 
been busy among them; time has laid his hand 
on one after another of the group; and they have 
gradually fallen asleep and rested from their good 
works below.' 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 19 

"Sir, we are permitted this day to see in our 
midst, on this interesting occasion, the only sur- 
viving patriarch of that band of intelligence and 
purity which brought this Society into existence. 
Honorable Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin, standing 
here, as he does, on the confines of two worlds, the 
native representative of New England and South 
Carolina's representative as the learned jurist and 
upright judge of his adopted state. 

"The state of his adoption honored him with 
the mantle of her chief justice, and by the purity 
of his legal and Christian life, he has brilliantly 
reflected back that honor; by preserving his 
integrity and the ermine of his mantle untarnished, 
without spot or blemish, South Carolina claims 
him as her son 'in whom there is no guile.' 

"Mr. President, in behalf of my colleagues, I 
have the honor to tender for your acceptance, as 
the representative head of the New England 
Society, this cemetery and its monument. May 
it last as long as time, and when it shall crumble 
away amidst the 'crash of worlds,' may the 
kindred dust of those it represents be reanimated 
and ascend amongst the redeemed of the Eternal 
World." 



20 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

In accepting the report of the committee, 
Mr. James B. Campbell, the president of the 
Society, spoke as follows: 

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Com- 
mittee: In behalf of and in the name of the New 
England Society, I thank you for your faithful 
performance of the duty that has been assigned 
you. We cordially approve of your arrangements, 
and I assure you that every heart here beats in 
acquiescence to what you have said of our vener- 
able brother, B. F. Dunkin. 

"Gentlemen of the New England Society, we 
are assembled here, in uncovered presence, with a 
good and noble motive. We have assembled to 
the performance of a work which will enlist the 
sympathy and feeling of every thinking person — 
to dedicate and lay the foundation of a simple 
and tasteful monument to mark the resting-place 
of our friends and brethren. I have a single 
remark to make in this connection, and I shall 
make it without enlarging upon it. There is one 
sentiment upon which all creeds and sects, reli- 
gious and irreligious, are united — a sentiment 
which obliterates the marks between civilization 
and barbarism and brings upon a common level 
degradation and the highest grade of civilization. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 21 

That sentiment is a reverence of the dead and the 
bur3nng places of the dead. I have never heard 
of any tribe or class or race of men so degraded 
who did not have a pious reverence for their bury- 
ing places. We have now to unite in that senti- 
ment, and it is well that we have done so. I am 
glad that I am here. I am glad that at this period 
of his life my venerable friend has seen the 
accomplishment of this work. I am glad that 
you are here to participate, and with these simple 
remarks made simply for the purpose of recalling 
this sentiment, we are here to pay our respects 
and do homage to that sentiment." 

The corner stone was then opened, and a her- 
metically sealed jar, containing a list of the 
members of this Society, its constitution and 
by-laws, copies of the Courier and the News, and 
other memoranda, were placed in the receptacle. 

In closing this the president said, rapping 
upon the stone with his gavel : 

"We have now performed the ceremony of 
laying the corner stone of this monument. Let 
us hope and believe that this solid granite will be 
indicative of our perpetuity and usefulness and of 
the stern and manly sentiment that should guide 
our conduct. Let us hope that it may be t)^ical 



22 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

of our character. If we may hope thus, we can 
have no earthly hope of a higher degree." 

The venerable ex-Chief Justice Dunkin was 
then introduced, and spoke with much feeling as 
follows : 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen: After what has 
been said, it cannot be expected of me to say 
much. It is nearly a half-century since that 
company met in the old Carolina Coffee House, 
in Tradd Street, to organize the New England 
Society. Many of us, if not descendants, were 
immediately connected with the descendants of 
the Plymouth Fathers, and the day of their land- 
ing on the Rock was adopted as our anniversary. 
The first presiding officers of the Society were the 
venerable Nathaniel Russell, of Rhode Island, 
long cherished by those who knew him, and 
Joseph Winthrop, of Massachusetts, a worthy 
representative of a long line of ancestors who 
landed from the Mayflower. Many were much 
older than myself, and some were even younger, 
but I was startled when I was told that none were 
left but myself. They have all gone to their long 
homes; but their v/orks do them honor. We 
organized that day an institution which promoted 
social relations and dispensed charity to the living 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 23 

and needy. We have met here today to tender 
our last mark of respect and regard to those who 
have died among us. I arose but to say these few 
words, and to tell you that I am with you now 
heart and soul, as I was with the Society at its 
birth. I loved and venerated New England, the 
land of my birth, where the bones of my ancestors 
lie; and we love the land of our adoption. Caro- 
lina has been kind to us all and in weal or woe is 
well entitled to our respect and grateful attach- 
ment. Here have been our early trials, our joys 
and sorrows, and I trust when life's feverish dream 
is past here too my ashes will repose." 

The benediction was pronounced by the 
Reverend W. H. Adams, a member of the Society. 

The Reverend C. S. Vedder, D.D., eighth 
president of the New England Society, notwith- 
standing the fact that four burying places were 
offered him, two of which were in his native state. 
New York, requested that he be buried in the 
cemetery of the New England Society at beauti- 
ful Magnolia. The request was granted by the 
Society, and the venerable "man of God" now 
rests there by the side of his saintly wife. 

In 1854 the president of the New England 
Society, Mr. A. S. Wilhngton, was introduced at a 



24 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

banquet given by the St. Andrews Society, in the 
following words : 

"Mr. President, I beg leave to welcome again 
to our festal board the respected president of the 
New England Society, the head of an institution 
not quite so gray in years as ours, but whose 
bounty to the widow and the orphan and whose 
efforts in the cause of true charity have been so 
extensive and liberal; such good deeds are worthy 
of being engraven on tablets of steel in letters of 
gold." 

This glowing tribute to the benevolent work of 
the New England Society, which during a period 
of one hundred years never turned a deaf ear to a 
needy cause, forms a fitting peroration to this 
chapter. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 25 



THE PRESIDENTS 

In a formative period of approximately one 
hundred years, the New England Society of 
Charleston has had only eight presidents. 

The eight, individually and collectively, repre- 
sented the best thought and action of their day. 
They were practical ideahsts. They stood for 
the New England type of manhood. 

All of them were elected to the office of presi- 
dent unanimously. All continued in office until 
removed by death. 

All of them lived to be more than threescore 
and ten years. It is quite extraordinary that the 
average age of the eight presidents was within a 
fraction of seventy-eight years. 

The sketches which follow are designed to give 
an estimate of their services and of the esteem in 
which they were held. 

NATHANIEL RUSSELL 

Nathaniel Russell, the first president of the 
New England Society of Charleston, was born at 
Bristol, Rhode Island, November 16, 1738. His 



26 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

ancestors had been leaders of thought and action 
in New England for more than one hundred and 
fifty years. His father, Joseph Russell, was for a 
time chief justice of Rhode Island. 

It was the Reverend John Russell, a forbear of 
Nathaniel Russell, who in 1675 concealed in his 
home at Hadley, Massachusetts, Edward Whalley, 
one of Cromwell's major generals, and William 
Goffe, an English parliamentary commander, who 
had been conspicuous in the Revolution of Eng- 
land and who had been instrumental in bringing 
a guilty king, Charles I, to the block. 

These two heroes of democracy were of course 
persona non grata to all who believed in the divine 
right of kings, consequently after the restoration 
of Charles II they were pursued and persecuted 
by the minions of royalty. They naturally fled 
to America for protection and safety, which they 
found in the castle of "the parson of Hadley," 
who at the peril of his life gave them a place of 
refuge. 

One hundred years ago some of the great mer- 
chants of the world lived in Charleston, South 
Carolina. They came from England, France, and 
New England. Thomas, in his Reminiscences 
and Sketches of His Life and Times, gives the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 27 

names of about forty of the leading merchants 
of Charleston in 1795. The name of Nathaniel 
Russell appears at the head of the list. There 
was only one native of South Carolina in the group 
mentioned, and he was a junior partner of one of 
the large firms; his name was Stoney. 

Mr. Thomas continued his observation by 
stating that "the door of the St. Cecilia Society 
was shut to the plebeian and the man of business, 
with two exceptions: Adam Tunno, king of the 
Scotch, and William Crafts, vice-king of the 
Yankees under their legitimate head, Nathaniel 
Russell, than whom there was no better man." 

Nathaniel Russell came to Charleston from 
New England a beardless youth, and by reason of 
rare ability, indomitable will power, and sterling 
integrity, became a merchant prince. 

Not many years after his arrival in Charleston 
he married Miss Sarah Hopton. Two daughters 
were born from this union — Sarah, who married 
the Right Reverend Theodore Dehon, D.D., 
bishop of South CaroHna, and Alicia, who married 
Arthur Middleton. 

In 181 1 Mr. Russell completed his mansion on 
Meeting Street, which was one of the most palatial 
residences at that time in the South. It was the 



28 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

first house built in Charleston in which marble 
keystones were used. Not many years ago, 
Dr. Thomas Nelson Page, the famous author and 
diplomat, in passing the Nathaniel Russell house, 
said to his friend, "There are my windows." 
When Dr. Page built his handsome residence in 
Washington, D.C., he sent an architect to Charles- 
ton to copy the beautiful windows Mr. Russell had 
designed for his Charleston home more than one 
hundred years before. 

After the death of Mr. Russell, Governor 
Alston lived in this elegant home. It is now the 
residence of Mr. Francis J. Pelzer. 

The New England Society of Charleston owes 
its existence to Nathaniel Russell. He was the 
moving spirit in its origin and organization, and 
quite naturally its first president. Next to his 
own family he loved this Society. He bequeathed 
to the Society its first legacy, the sum of five hun- 
dred dollars, which at the time was a large amount, 
and which became the nucleus of an endowment 
of more than twenty thousand dollars. "He 
builded better than he knew." 

He died April ii, 1820, full of years and full of 
good works. A splendid tomb marks his resting- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 29 

place in the cemetery of the Circular Congrega- 
tional Church, on Meeting Street. 

The day after his death the following appre- 
ciation appeared in the Courier: 

Died, yesterday, in his residence in Meeting Street, 
the venerable Nathaniel Russell, an upright, honorable 
man, a philanthropist, and a fervent and exemplary 
Christian. He was a native of New England, an honor 
to the land which gave him birth, and a blessing to this 
city which has long enjoyed the light of his virtues, the 
warmth of his benevolence, and the chastening purity of 
his character and influence. 

This morning will consign his remains to the grave — 
and he who for nearly a century has been doing good on 
earth wUl be seen here no more. We cannot express 
what we feel on this afflicting bereavement. 

The Right Reverend Nathaniel Bowen, D.D., 
writing in his register in 1820, paid the following 
tribute: 

"The death of my venerable friend, Mr. 
Nathaniel Russell, was a deeply affecting event. 
From my earliest youth he had sustained toward 
me the relation of a kind, paternal counselor and 
friend. He had been the friend of my father when 
he came in search of a professional establishment 
in this country. 

"He was the friend and protector of my 
mother in the destitution and sorrow of her 



30 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

widowhood, and he never failed to evince towards 
me the kindest and most benevolent affection. 
How could I entertain a faint sentiment of grati- 
tude or love towards him ? He was not of the 
church of which I am; but he was a Christian of 
no ordinary excellence; and there was always 
that in him that gave him an unquestionable 
claim to be respected. 

"He was a virtuous, wise man, and I truly 
believe he diligently sought to be accepted of God 
through Jesus Christ. 

"Thine own and thy father's friend forget not. 
Mr. Russell's death, though at eighty-two years 
of age, was a public loss of considerable impor- 
tance." 

WiUiam Crafts, Jr., speaking at the annual 
celebration of the New England Society, just 
a few months after the death of Mr. Russell, 
said: 

"It is the record of active and persevering 
virtues, such as filled up and adorned and endeared 
the life of your late worthy president and bene- 
factor. I miss from among you his venerable 
form. He rests from his benevolent labors. The 
useful only have a right to live, and sweet is repose 
after honorable toil." 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 31 

JOSEPH WINTHROP 

Joseph Winthrop, second president of the 
New England Society, was born at New London, 
Connecticut, June 19, 1757. He was a lineal 
descendant of the first governor, John Winthrop, 
standing fifth in line of descent. His distin- 
guished nephew, Robert C. Winthrop, whose 
name has been linked with the cause of education 
from the day when, in a new colony, John Win- 
throp signed the first voluntary subscription for 
free schools in America, was selected by George 
Peabody as the administrator of his great bene- 
faction of over three million dollars for the cause 
of common education of the children of the South, 
when almost all of the schools were closed as the 
result of the Civil War. 

The great Winthrop Normal College for 
women, located at Rock Hill, South Carolina, 
was by common consent of the people of the 
state named in honor of Robert C. Winthrop. 

Joseph Winthrop came to Charleston in 1783. 
He at once entered the mercantile business and 
became one of the prominent merchants of the 
city. For more than a generation he was actively 
engaged in the development of the commercial, 



32 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

educational, and religious life of his adopted city. 

In 1788 he married Miss Mary Eraser, daughter 
of Alexander Fraser. 

Mr. Winthrop was one of the founders of the 
New England Society. His name appears second 
on the list of original members. He was elected 
vice-president when the Society was organized in 
181 9, and president one year later. 

His tomb, in the cemetery of St. Michael's 
Church, bears the following inscription: 

SACRED 

TO THE MEMORY 

OF 

JOSEPH WINTHROP 

WHO WAS BORN 19TH JUNE, 1757 

IN NEW LONDON, CONN. 

AND DIED 26TH JULY, 1828 

IN THIS CITY OF WHICH HE 

HAD BEEN FOR 45 YEARS 

A WORTHY AND RESPECTABLE 

INHABITANT 

DODDRIDGE CROCKER 

Doddridge Crocker, third president of the New 
England Society, was born at Andover, Connecti- 
cut, in 1769. He came to Charleston in 1788, and 
entered the mercantile business in which he con- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 33 

tinued for over fifty years. An old Charleston 
friend, writing of him shortly after his death, said : 

"He was the oldest merchant in this city, and 
it can with truth be said that during this extended 
series of years, immersed in commerce and in 
continual association with our citizens, he left not 
an enemy behind. Mild, unassuming, benevo- 
lent — he breathed nothing but good will and 
peace to his fellow-man. Honest, industrious, 
energetic — he ever commanded the most perfect 
respect from all. Mr. Crocker had often been 
solicited to occupy public stations, but being 
retiring in disposition, he invariably declined 
them, and with the single exception of being presi- 
dent of the New England Society, he has ever 
considered that a private station was the post of 
honor." 

At a meeting of the New England Society, 
June 2, 1847, the following preamble and resolu- 
tions were adopted: 

"Whereas, It has pleased Almighty God to 
remove from among us our late venerable Presi- 
dent, Doddridge Crocker, the occasion seems 
appropriate for expressing our lively sense of this 
solemn dispensation of Divine Providence, as well 
as placing upon the archives of this Society some 



34 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

enduring memorial of the virtues of that excellent 
man. For more than half a century Mr. Crocker 
has been a citizen of Charleston and, while pos- 
sessing modest and unobtrusive manners, he has, 
during all that time, deservedly enjoyed the 
reputation of an accomplished merchant, a 
courteous gentleman, and a man of inflexible 
integrity. He was, besides, a sincere Christian, 
one who feared God, respected the rights of his 
fellow-men, and ever maintained a conscience 
void of ofifense. 

"The subject of this memorial, while yet a 
youth, was placed by his father in a counting- 
house in Boston, and there became familiar with 
those duties of the merchant which he so success- 
fully and honorably performed to the close of a 
long and an exemplary life. He appears to have 
been endowed by nature not with brilliant but 
with substantial powers of mind. His chief intel- 
lectual characteristic was strong common sense; 
and among his moral qualities the most remark- 
able were a love of justice and a love of truth. To 
these he added the advantages of a plain, sub- 
stantial education and an engaging address, which 
made him welcome in all circles where real worth 
is duly appreciated. Mr. Crocker was a man of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 35 

genuine but unostentatious benevolence, ever 
especially ready to seek out and relieve objects of 
distress and to encourage and patronize youthful 
merit. There are many in this community who 
can bear testimony to such substantial evidences 
of his friendship — many who can truly say that 
when the ear heard him it blessed him, and when 
the eye saw him it bore witness of him, because he 
delivered the fatherless who had none to help him, 
and caused the widow's heart to leap for joy. 

" Mr. Crocker was one of the original founders 
of the New England Society of Charleston; was 
elected its third president in 1828, and has been 
its presiding officer nineteen years. During this 
long period, he has exercised the presidential func- 
tions with dignity and ability; has ever been 
watchful of the interests of the Society, mani- 
fested a deep solicitude for its prosperity, as well 
as a lively concern for the success and happiness 
of its individual members. We shall see his face 
and his venerable form among us no more forever ! 
He has passed through this probationary state — 
has ended the perilous journey of life — ^having 
nobly resisted the temptations and avoided the 
snares which beset the path of all men. He was 
a pure-minded, honorable, upright gentleman of 



36 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the old school — sincere, consistent, faithful, and 
hopeful to the last. 

''He has descended to the grave full of years 
and full of honor, without a spot upon his name, 
a fair specimen of what a New Englander is, or 
should be, and leaving behind him a character 
which all justly thinking men may admire and 
emulate. Therefore 

"jBg it resolved, That this Society feels deeply 
sensible of the loss which it has sustained in the 
death of Doddridge Crocker, for a series of years 
its venerable and excellent president; and that 
as a testimony of respect for his many and rare 
virtues its members will wear the usual badge of 
mourning for the space of thirty days. 

"Resolved, That a copy of this preamble and 
of these resolutions be communicated to the only 
surviving sister and to the other relatives of the 
deceased, with expressions of sympathy and of 
our sincere condolence with them in their afflic- 
tive bereavement." 

Doddridge Crocker was for many years a 
prominent and active member of the Circular 
Congregational Church. His tomb in the ceme- 
tery of that church bears the following inscrip- 
tion: 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 37 



m 

MEMOEY OF 

MR. DODDRIDGE CROCKER 

WHO DIED 

MAY 2 1 ST, 1847 

IN HIS 79TH YEAR 



Gently the passing spirit fled 
Sustained by grace divine 
Oh may such grace on us be shed 
And make our end like thine. 

AARON SMITH WILLINGTON 

Aaron Smith Willington, fourth president of 
the New England Society, was born at East Sud- 
bury, now Wayland, Massachusetts, March 12, 
1781. His father was Josiah Willington, "a 
soldier of the Revolution." His mother died in 
giving him birth; and at the age of ten he was 
put under the care of his grandfather, who ordered 
him to manual labor, giving him the advantage 
however of attending school three months annu- 
ally. From this early period of his life he earned 
his own living; subsequently he was apprenticed 
to the proprietors of the Boston Palladium, where 
he learned the art of printing. 

He came to Charleston in 1802 under the 
auspices of Loring Andrews, of Boston, who in 



38 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

1803 established the Charleston Courier and made 
young Willington his foreman. Within a decade 
the energetic and ambitious young foreman 
became editor of the Charleston Courier, succeed- 
ing the erudite Dr. Frederick Dalcho, who retired 
upon entering the ministry of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. 

Under the able editorship of Mr. Willington, 
the Courier became one of the leading newspapers 
of the country, and was regarded highly in all 
parts of the United States as an interpreter of the 
best Southern thought, in the great issues which 
had at various times agitated the country. In 
the era of nullification, it was the leading Union 
organ in the state, and upheld the Union against 
what it regarded as an unconstitutional and incon- 
gruous attempt to resist the laws of the Union 
within the Union. In the secession crisis of 1851 
and 1852 it still upheld the flag of the Union and 
threw its weight in the co-operation against the 
secession scale, as a choice of evils. In the seces- 
sion era of i860 it held the election of a sectional 
president, on grounds of political and fanatical 
hostility to the constitutional rights and cherished 
domestic institutions of the South, to be properly 
and inevitably the knell of Union, and went with 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 39 

the state and the South in dissolving a connec- 
tion with unfaithful confederates and establishing 
an independent Southern Confederacy. In these 
views Mr. Willington, although of Northern 
parentage and birth, heartily concurred; and he 
died as he had lived, faithful and devoted to the 
home of his adoption and choice and the field of 
his useful, honorable, and successful labors. In 
proof of his Southern feeling, in the year i860 he 
said to a friend: "This is my last visit North, for 
I am thoroughly disgusted with abolitionism." ' 

It is of more than passing interest to note that 
James Gordon Bennett began his newspaper 
career under the direction of A. S. Willington in 
the office of the Charleston Daily Courier (as it 
was then called) as a paragraphist and translator 
of Spanish. 

Mr. Willington was the fourth and last of the 
original members of the New England Society to 
be chosen president. During his term of office, 
which covered a very critical period — from 1847 
to 1862 — the affairs of the Society were managed 
with great wisdom and wonderful tact. 

Mr. Willington died February 2, 1862, in his 
eighty-first year. Among the many tributes 
paid to this noble Christian gentleman by men of 



40 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

distinction from all parts of the nation, two are 
selected, both of which were written by intimate 
friends who lived in Charleston, 

"He was a man of great public spirit, liberal 
hospitality, and unstinted benevolence. Readily 
and bountifully did he aid, with purse and influ- 
ence, enterprises for the public good. He ever 
had a heart to devise and a hand to do liberal 
things. He realized by a happy experience the 
scriptural truths that 'the liberal soul shall be 
made fat,' and that 'he that watereth shall be 
watered himself; that 'he becometh poor that 
dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the 
diligent maketh rich'; that 'he that hath pity on 
the poor lendeth unto the Lord, and that which 
he hath given, will he pay him again'; and 'often 
did he cause the widow's heart to sing for joy.' 
His was that true and undefiled religion which 
consists in visiting the widow and fatherless in 
their afSiction, and keeping himself unspotted 
from the world. There was a daily beauty in his 
life which, although it made not the lives of other 
men ugly, yet served as an example and model for 
imitation, surrounded him with troops of friends, 
and won the general esteem and love of the com- 
munity in which he hved. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 41 

"A self-made man, he yet attained a high 
degree of social distinction and bore a prominent 
part in political and business life. He served as a 
warden or alderman of the city, was a member of 
the state legislature, a director in banks and 
insurance companies, even up to the time of his 
death, having been in the directory of the Planters 
and Mechanics Bank, and a member of various 
charitable institutions." 

I've scann'd the actions of his daily life, 

And nothing meets mine eyes but deeds of Honor. 

"Of his public career, his patriotism, fidelity, 
and usefulness in various positions of honor and 
of trust, his record as a good citizen is before the 
country and community. His social virtues, too, 
the genial companionship with all of all ages who 
approached him, the generous hospitality which 
he dispensed so cordially and gracefully, endeared 
him to many warmly attached friends. His 
civility and the ordering of his entertainment — 
the reception and entertaining of his guests — was 
remarkable for its welcome and refinement. 
Though it cannot be said ' his eye was not dimmed ' 
in later years, yet his natural force of intellect was 
not abated by the approach of age; so far from 
this, as time alone can make the almond tree to 



42 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

flourish, so his old age seemed to grow kinder and 
kinder as he ripened for Heaven, rendering him 
more and more attractive at the close of life by 
the loveliness of the qualities he then displayed. 

" It frequently happens that the good spirit of 
a single mind makes the mind of multitudes take 
a right direction. A good example is like a mirror 
unto a generation, into which the young can look 
and see reflected what is best for their ultimate 
good, having a more efficient influence upon 
society than the most stringent laws that can be 
passed for man's control. It is in this way that 
example is more powerful than precept, and we 
become in this world mutually profitable — 'our 
lives in acts exemplary not only win for ourselves 
good names but give to others matter for vir- 
tuous deeds!' 

"There was in the character of Mr. WiUington 
a repose and a quiet dignity which rendered it 
eminently fascinating. It is pleasant and will be 
profitable to remember his ways of life — the serene 
light that seemed ever to be shining upon his path, 
that path so placid and pure. No man ever 
shrunk more from notoriety than he did, and yet 
few men have ever enjoyed more popularity and 
greater respect from their feUow-men. His head 




JOSEPH WINTHROP 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 43 

and heart were of the best order to make a man 
beloved. He was not only polite, abounding in 
the courtesies of life, but he was much more than 
this: he was a Christian gentleman, the principle 
of whose life is to conform himself as far as pos- 
sible to the Image of Him who was Himself the 
incarnate Image of God! 

"We ought to be very grateful that such a 
great man was permitted to live among us; and 
as we are not likely soon again in the present 
excited condition of the country to witness his 
counterpart, it is to be hoped that the rising 
generation will remember his well-balanced char- 
acter and strive by Divine aid to imitate his 
many virtues." 

Mr. WiUington was a devout member of the 
Episcopal Church. His tomb in the cemetery of 
St. Philip's Church bears the following inscription: 

SACRED 

TO THE MEMORY OF 

A. S. WILLINGTON 

DIED FEBRUARY 2ND, 1 862 

IN HIS 8 1 ST YEAR 

HE WAS THE SENIOR EDITOR 

OF THE CHARLESTON NEWS AND COURIER 

NEARLY SIXTY YEARS 

"the memory of the just IS blessed" 



44 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

OTIS MILLS 

Otis Mills, fifth president of the New England 
Society, was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 
May 8, 1794. Early in life, and when in moderate 
circumstances, he came to Charleston and organ- 
ized the firm of O. Mills and Company, grain mer- 
chants. His business venture prospered rapidly, 
and in a very few years he became one of the most 
prominent merchants and one of the largest 
owners of real estate in Charleston. In 1845 he 
purchased the United States Court House prop- 
erty, located at the corner of Queen and Meeting 
streets, and four years afterward had the building 
pulled down and the hotel known as the Mills 
House erected on the spot. Mr. Mills also pur- 
chased three Atlantic wharves, which he improved 
and developed. 

He became a member of the New England 
Society in 1822, served for many years as a mem- 
ber of the committee on charity, and was unani- 
mously elected president in 1862. He was the 
man of the hour, and steered the Society through 
its most critical crisis, from 1862 to 1869. It is 
indeed wonderful that the New England Society 
in Charleston should have grown and prospered 
at this crucial time. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 45 

Mr. Mills died October 23, 1869, in the 
seventy-fifth year of his age. He was a member 
of St. Michael's Church and is buried in the 
cemetery attached to that church. 

The Charleston News published the following 
appreciation of Mr. Mills at the time of his death: 

"He came from a family in Massachusetts who 
have ever been closely identified with the Demo- 
cratic party. His brother, John Mills, was the 
leader of the party in Massachusetts, and was for 
over twenty years district attorney for the state, 
having been appointed under the administra- 
tion of President Jackson. His nephew, Darwin 
Beech, was the Democratic candidate for gover- 
nor of the state. 

"Mr. Mills was no politician, albeit his sym- 
pathies were extremely Southern, and the 'Lost 
Cause' had no more devoted friend, no more 
staunch supporter, than he. At the inception 
of the late war he sold almost every lot of city 
land — almost every building that he possessed — 
and invested the proceeds in Confederate bonds. 
When he announced his intention to sell the 
'Mills House' his friends remonstrated with him, 
but remonstrance was in vain and that valuable 
property was also sold. When the citizens of 



46 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Charleston were called upon to aid the military- 
authorities in erecting fortifications around the 
city, none responded more readily than Mr. Mills, 
and he and his slaves were at work incessantly 
day and night where their services were most 
needed. His practical faith in the success of our 
cause and his excessive generosity in risking his 
fortune therewith left him at the termination of 
the war almost penniless. 

"During his business career he was known as 
the young man's friend. Generous to a fault, no 
one ever applied in vain to his office for assistance. 
He was most willing and always ready to lend 
assistance to the young man; and it is said that 
the name of Otis Mills was more frequently on the 
notes and bonds of the younger portion of our 
business community than that of any other man 
in the city. It speaks well for Charleston when 
we add that one who was intimate with him said 
that, to his knowledge, Mr. Mills never lost a 
dollar by reason of his kind generosity. 

"A good man has left us, one who has proven 
himself a benefactor to the city in the widest sense 
of the term, and his memory will be cherished by 
Charleston as one of her dearest and most valued 
sons. He was generous to all who knew or needed 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 47 

his assistance, staunch in his devotion to the home 
of his choice and adoption, energetic in his busi- 
ness relations, kind and courteous to all with 
whom he was thrown in contact, and liked by all 
who knew him. His life was guided at all times 
by the principles of the highest morality, and 
exemplified to the fullest extent ' the noblest work 
of God.'" 



JAMES BUTLER CAMPBELL 

James Butler Campbell, sixth president of the 
New England Society, was born at Oxford, 
Massachusetts, October 27, 1808. He graduated 
at Brown University in 1822, which institution 
subsequently conferred upon him the honorary 
degree of LL.D. 

His great ancestor, the Reverend John Camp- 
bell, of the Scottish Campbells, of London, was so 
staunch an adherent of the Stuarts that in 1717 
he came to America a political refugee, and in 
1 72 1 became the first Presbyterian minister at 
Oxford, Massachusetts. 

Mr. Campbell came to South CaroHna in 1826 
and taught school a number of years on Edisto 
Island. During this period he began the study of 



48 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

law, which he subsequently continued in Charles- 
ton, in the office of Hugh S. Legare. Mr. Camp- 
bell took an active part in public affairs and was 
engaged in the great nullification contest. His 
first vote in South Carolina was cast on the Union 
side. In 183 1 Mr. Campbell removed to Charles- 
ton and began the practice of law. His zeal, 
capability, and daring soon attracted the atten- 
tion of the Union leaders of the day and he was 
selected as one of the delegates from Charleston 
to the Union convention which met in Columbia 
at a time of intense excitement, and when it was 
thought that the duty involved personal danger. 
Mr. Campbell afterward became the confiden- 
tial agent and correspondent at Washington of 
the Union Committee of South Carolina. While 
there, he resided for a time with General Jackson 
at the White House and was in daily communica- 
tion with the President and many other prominent 
men. Among the number was Daniel Webster, 
with whom Mr. Campbell then renewed an 
acquaintance formed in his boyhood. It soon 
ripened into friendship, and Mr. CampbeU and 
Mr. Webster continued to correspond with each 
other as long as Mr. Webster lived. In South 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 49 

Carolina Mr. Campbell had the entire confidence 
of Drayton, Cheves, the Hugers, Petigru, Pringle, 
and Poinsett. Their esteem he enjoyed through- 
out their lives. About the year 1837 Mr. Camp- 
bell married the youngest daughter of Governor 
Bennett, of South Carolina. 

In 1850-52 political excitement in South 
Carolina again ran high. Mr. Campbell was 
elected a member of the state legislature and 
opposed strenuously the extreme views and propo- 
sitions of that day. Finally he prepared and 
carried through the legislature the Convention 
Bill, which by its provisions and machinery 
brought the questions at issue directly home to 
the people. 

When the secession movement culminated in 
South Carohna, in i860, Mr. Campbell stood 
entirely aloof and declined to be a candidate for 
election to the legislature or to the state conven- 
tion. It is claimed by those who knew him best 
that he predicted that the Southern cause would 
be lost if the South began war or allowed itself 
to be made chargeable with the commencement 
of hostilities. He was confident that it would 
be the policy of the party then coming into 



50 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

power in the Union to tempt the South to com- 
mit some act of aggression. Mr. Campbell there- 
fore opposed the bombardment of Fort Sumter, 
and denounced publicly the declaration of Mr. 
Walker, the secretary of war of the Confederate 
States. 

Mr. Campbell believed firmly in the justice of 
the Southern cause, but believed that an armed 
collision, unless in the strictest self-defense, could 
not fail to be disastrous. What he apparently 
hoped for was that there would be a civil revolu- 
tion in politics. In 1862, when the magnitude of 
the struggle began to be appreciated, Mr. Camp- 
bell was elected a member of the legislature, 
serving in that body with Governor B. F. Perry. 
Mr. Campbell was one of the minority in the 
legislature who opposed the administration of 
President Davis, while Governor Perry was the 
leader of the administration party. Both Mr. 
Campbell and Governor Perry had been under 
the ban in the earlier days of secession on account 
of their opposition to the policy which was adopted 
by the people. Mr. Campbell, in a word, was a 
Union man from first to last. His sympathy 
with the South was ardent, but none loved the 
Union more sincerely than he. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 51 

In December, 1866, under the provisional 
government, Mr. Campbell was proposed as a 
candidate for the United States Senate and was 
elected. Concerning this election, a statement 
from the Reverend Dr. Boyce is of value. 

"The gentleman elected owed his election in 
some respects to the valuable services he had been 
able to render to the citizens of the state while 
visiting Washington City upon professional busi- 
ness. It is said that his advice and favor were not 
confined to his clients but were given gratuitously 
to other citizens who sought them. It was dis- 
tinctly avowed that to this fact, no less than to 
his rare personal merits, J. B. Campbell owes his 
present position of senator-elect for six years from 
the 4th of March next, as well as of the unexpired 
term of Governor Manning, who sent in his letter 
of resignation upon the election of Mr. Campbell 
as his successor. 

"The senator-elect is a man of fine personal 
presence, very astute intellect, and a debater of 
great eloquence, sarcasm, and ingenuity. He 
occupies at present the first position at the 
Charleston bar; indeed, it may be said that he is 
there almost without a rival. He is about fifty-five 



52 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

years of age, and bears in his countenance the 
evidence of his Scotch ancestry. There is per- 
haps no man in South CaroHna whose sympathies 
were with the South and yet whose love for the 
Union and the Constitution has been stronger 
than that of Mr. Campbell. His views were 
well known, and the election, decidedly the most 
complimentary ever received for United States 
senator, shows that this state is not disposed to 
place a stigma upon a citizen who loves the 
Union when she knows that citizen to be one 
true and faithful also to her interests; and more 
than this, that a man of Northern birth is as 
much regarded by her when worthy of her confi- 
dence as though he first drew breath upon her 
own soil." 

It is a matter of history that the Southern 
states were denied representation in congress 
under the provisional governments, and Mr. 
Campbell was excluded with the senators and 
representatives from the other states "lately in 
rebellion." 

Mr. Campbell's letter resigning his seat in the 
General Assembly of South Carolina evinces his 
fine literary ability : 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 53 

House of Representatives 

December 20, 1886 

To the Honorable the Speaker and Members of the House 
of Representatives 

Gentlemen : 

Hereby accepting the office of a senator of the United 
States, to which the choice of this general assembly has 
elevated me, I resign my place as a member of this house.- 

There is no earthly honor I should as much value as 
the uninvited good opinion and confidence of the people 
of South Carolina. That their representatives should 
have called me into their service in the place of highest 
honor within their gift, at a time of extreme gloom and 
despondency, impresses me with feelings of profound 
gratitude. 

With my official farewell to the members of this 
house, I venture to tender to each, personally, the expres- 
sion of my friendship and hearty good wishes. There is 
no one of them, so far as I know or have cause to believe, 
who bears toward me any other relation than of kindness 
and considerate good will. I know there is no one of 
them who has not a place in my friendship and an acknowl- 
edged claim to such kind offices as may be in my power to 
offer. 

Considering the frailty of my own excitable tempera- 
ment, and the habitual collisions of debate, this I recog- 
nize as the evidence of remarkable forbearance toward 
me. The recollection of all these things will adhere to 
me for the remainder of my life. They will cheer me under 
the depression of a comparison with the great intellects 
who have preceded me through the better days of the 



54 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Commonwealth, and, adding strength to the great debt of 
gratitude I acknowledge, will stimulate me under the 
peculiar responsibilities of the honor you have conferred 
to steadily persevere, to the end that, even under the 
present glimmering hope, I may yet do something for 
the welfare and the honor of South Carolina. 
I am, with great respect 

James B. Campbell 

In 1877 M^- Campbell was unanimously nomi- 
nated by the Democratic convention as a candi- 
date for state senator for Charleston County and 
was elected without opposition. He never held 
public office again. 

Mr. Campbell became a member of the New 
England Society in 1831. He was elected secre- 
tary and treasurer in 1833, served for a number of 
years as a member of the committee on charity, 
was elected junior vice-president in 1851, senior 
vice-president in 1866, and president in 1869. He 
delivered more addresses at the annual celebra- 
tions of the Society than any other president, with 
the single exception of Dr. C. S. Vedder. He was 
the first annual orator to cast aside the established 
custom of reading a laboriously prepared address. 
In 1848 he delivered a masterful oration without 
notes or memoranda. His effort on this notable 
occasion thrilled both members and guests. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 55 

Mr. Campbell was an intimate friend and 
staunch supporter of Wade Hampton. During 
his term as president of the Society, Governor 
Hampton was invited to deliver an address at the 
annual celebration, and, being unable to attend, 
sent the following letter of regret : 

State of South Carolina 
Executive Chamber 

Columbia, December 20, 1877 
Gentlemen: 

It would give me very great pleasure to be with you 
on the 2 2d, but unfortunately I had made engagements 
for that day before the reception of your polite invitation. 
But for this circumstance, I should join most cordially in 
the celebration of the anniversary of your Society. 

Regretting my inability to do so, and with my best 
wishes, I am, 

Very respectfully and truly yours 

Wade Hampton 

Mr. Campbell died November 8, 1883, in 
his seventy-sixth year, in Washington, D.C., 
where he had gone to complete his work as com- 
missioner for South Carolina, under act of congress 
of 1862. In this case, and in many others, his 
brilliant legal attainments made him the peer of 
the great lawyers of the nation. Among his last 
words were: "I want to be buried in Charleston, 



56 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

because the people of that city speak so kindly of 
the dead." 

Mr. Campbell was a staunch member of the 
Presbyterian Church. His old home, located on 
Beaufain Street, is now the Presbyterian Home 
for Indigent Ladies. 



WILLIAM SMITH HASTIE 

WiUiam Smith Hastie, seventh president of the 
New England Society, was born in the city of New 
York, of Scotch parentage, July 3, 1807. He was 
educated at Pickett University, an institution of 
high repute at that time. He married a daughter 
of John Franklin, a descendant of the colonial 
family after which Franklin Square, New York, 
was named. 

Mr. Hastie came to Charleston in 1853 as the 
mercantile partner of P. C. Calhoun, president of 
the Fourth National Bank of New York City. 
The wholesale house of Hastie, Calhoun and 
Company was dissolved in 1869. Mr. Hastie 
then organized the insurance firm of W. S. Hastie 
and Son, which after more than fifty years of 
honorable service is still one of the most promi- 
nent insurance agencies in the city of Charleston 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 57 

and is owned and managed by one of his descend- 
ants, Mr. C. Norwood Hastie. 

Mr. Hastie was a director in a number of busi- 
ness organizations, the organizer and first presi- 
dent of the Board of Trade, and held many other 
positions of trust and confidence. 

Mr. Hastie became a member of the New Eng- 
land Society in 1855. He served for a number of 
years as a member of the committee on charity, 
was elected junior vice-president in 1875, senior 
vice-president in 1879, and president in 1883. He 
died October 22, 1884, in the seventy-eighth year 
of his age. 

In assuming the presidency of the Society, the 
Reverend Dr. C. S. Vedder paid the following 
tribute to his predecessor in office : 

"When my brothers were in Europe for years, 
they placed their entire estates in the hands of 
William S. Hastie, to do with them as his judg- 
ment should dictate ; and I have in my possession 
the correspondence which followed their return to 
America, and it is one of which any man might be 
proud. 

" These are, in substance, the words of a letter 
received since the decease of our lamented presi- 
dent. They refer to a period forty years ago, and 



58 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

are specially significant as illustrating the reputa- 
tion for stainless integrity which our friend 
brought with him to Carolina. There is also in 
the possession of his family today a beautiful and 
costly service of silver, suitably inscribed, pre- 
sented by the brothers — of whom the writer of 
the above was one — testifying their appreciation 
of the noble fidelity of Mr. Hastie in the discharge 
of this most delicate and responsible trust. It 
bears the date, January i, 1849, It was with a 
character and with credentials such as these things 
imply that four years afterward our late president 
came to this city. It was a future which such 
repute insured that he voluntarily relinquished 
when he removed from the great commercial 
center where it was acquired. He gave up a 
large, lucrative, and ever-increasing business in 
obedience to that which was the ruling principle 
of his life — tender concern for the health of a 
beloved wife while she lived, and devotion to her 
memory until he joined her in another life. 

"For more than thirty years Mr. Hastie was 
closely and prominently identified with the in- 
terests of this city, maintaining in every sphere 
and relation the same repute for honor, integrity, 
and capacity with which he came hither. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 59 

"Of marked individuality of character, he 
formed his own opinions and had always the cour- 
age of his convictions. If there were times when 
his views of public policy differed from those of 
very many around him, his unfaltering firmness 
never failed to command respect and never 
impaired the relations of friendship. In the time 
of social and civil upheaval which immediately 
followed the war, he was called by the best senti- 
ment of our community to an official position of 
great delicacy and difficulty in Charleston, and 
discharged its duties with singular prudence and 
wisdom. With prophetic insight, he counseled 
them to a course of political action which vindi- 
cated itself when it was adopted ten years after- 
ward. Essentially a man of practical thought 
and effort, Mr. Hastie responded instinctively to 
every appeal of need and trouble. His adminis- 
tration of his official duties brought upon him the 
blessing of the widow and orphan, and there lies 
before the author of these fines, as he writes, a 
letter of overflowing gratitude to Mr. Hastie from 
one of historic name whom his exertions and influ- 
ence had so munificently served that she says: 'It 
seems to me that you were raised to be my true 
friend by a Heavenly Providence.'" 



6o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Mr. Hastie was a member of the Presbyterian 
Church. 

CHARLES STUART VEDDER 

Charles Stuart Vedder, eighth president of the 
New England Society, was born in Schenectady, 
New York, October 7, 1826. In his boyhood it 
was his ambition to become an editor. He 
wished to begin at the bottom and learn all the 
branches, and so he started as a printer on a small 
paper in New York, under the management of the 
Harper Company. At the end of four years he 
was editor of the paper. Having accumulated a 
small sum of money, he decided to study for the 
ministry, entering Union College. He was gradu- 
ated in 185 1 at the head of his class. After 
graduation from college he developed throat 
trouble and accepted an appointment as tutor 
and professor for a number of years. 

Deciding that a milder climate would be bene- 
ficial to his health, he came to Columbia, South 
Carolina, entered the Theological Seminary of the 
Presbyterian Church, and graduated with honors. 
His first pastorate was at Summerville, South 
Carolina. In 1866 he became pastor of the his- 
toric Huguenot Church, in Charleston, which posi- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 6i 

tion he held for fifty years. He was a member of 
the Charleston Presbytery fifty-six years. 

In 1876 New York University conferred upon 
him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The 
College of Charleston conferred the same degree 
simultaneously. Later the College of Charleston 
gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law. 
Union College conferred upon him the degree of 
Doctor of Humanities. 

Dr. Vedder was a member of the Holland 
Society of New York, and wrote a poem which 
was read at one of its anniversary celebrations. 

He was a prominent member of the Huguenot 
Society and for a quarter of a century president 
of the Howard Association of Charleston. He 
was one of the founders of the Confederate Home 
and College, located in Charleston. He presided 
at the organization meeting in 1867 and at the 
annual meetings for forty years ensuing. For a 
number of years he taught in this institution, 
serving without compensation. 

Dr. Vedder' s reputation as a preacher, orator, 
and lecturer was nation-wide. Many of his ser- 
mons, poems, and lectures were published and 
widely read. He also acquired a great reputation 
as a postprandial speaker. A distinguished New 



62 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

York editor was present at one of the annual 
celebrations of the New England Society and 
heard Dr. Vedder speak. His comment was: "I 
have heard Chauncey Depew at his best; Dr. 
Vedder is his superior." 

Dr. Vedder was elected to membership in the 
New England Society in 1881. Three years later 
he became president, which office he held for thirty- 
two years. Upon the occasion of his golden wed- 
ding anniversary the Society presented to Dr. 
Vedder a large loving cup as a token of the affec- 
tion and high esteem in which he was held. 

Dr. Vedder died March i, 191 7, in his ninety- 
first year. At his own request he was buried by 
the side of his wife in the cemetery of the New 
England Society at Magnolia. 

Mr. J. P. K. Bryan, one of the most brilliant 
lawyers in the South, was designated by the 
Society to prepare a minute on the death of its 
venerable president. His worthy tribute foUows: 

"Charles Stuart Vedder, D.D., LL.D., 
L.H.D. 

"A great spirit has passed and yet abides with 
us. 

"Others may celebrate the virtues of his 
exalted life, his earnest patriotism, his devotion, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 63 

though a stranger in this city, to the Southern 
cause, and his lofty sacrifice, renouncing family, 
early friends, and fortune in giving himself wholly 
to the help of the people of the South in the long 
years of their direst need, and as a watchful 
guardian of the orphans of her heroic dead. 

"It is for others to recall his ecclesiastical 
learning, his power in the pulpit, and his long 
years of faithful service as the pastor of the only 
Huguenot Church in America. 

"A grateful people celebrates his big-hearted 
charity as the ever loyal friend of 'Tiny Tim' in 
all the years of this city. 

"It is moreover for others to portray his poetic 
genius and his literary gift, and to measure their 
power and influence, as it is for those nearest to 
him to speak of the sacred communion of home 
and family and the love and blessing he shed there. 

"But here, in this Society, it is our special 
privilege that he was one with us. As our presi- 
dent for over thirty years, there was for him and 
for us a peculiar bond of close friendship and 
fellowship. For this Society he cherished a deep 
affection and a strong pride in all of its history 
and gave to its upbuilding the best efforts of his 
mind and heart. 



64 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"He knew well the deep foundations of the life 
of New England. He loved and reverenced the 
stern, abiding principles of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
even as he loved and reverenced the heroic mould 
and quenchless faith of the Huguenot. He sought 
here, in the home of the cavalier, to keep the 
sacred fires burning on all these altars, and with 
the sterner elements and their spiritual meaning 
he sought ever to blend all the graces of life and 
the charm of letters. 

" In this Society he was always at home among 
friends, and here his versatile gifts had full expres- 
sion; here he poured out his heart; here his imagi- 
nation reveled in all kindling associations, his 
playful humor was unfailing, and the sallies of his 
wit gave endless mirth; here indeed he was always 
wise and yet always human and tender, 

"But his greatest service was in making the 
Society nation-wide in its fame and attracting here 
great intellects in his time. We wiU remember 
him at his best as presiding on the great occasions 
in celebration of Forefathers' Day, when he was 
indeed our noblest host, as it was his pride to 
give royal welcome to our distinguished guests — • 
great rulers, judges, orators, statesmen, and men 
of letters — and to vie brilliancy with those gifted 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 65 

spirits that have stirred and charmed us for two 
generations about our board. 

"And among that goodly company of the 
great and learned his genial, famihar face stands 
out, a shining memory, in abiding inspiration. 
Although he was ninety when he died, he never 
grew old. Though bowed by the weight of years, 
his heart was ever young; and though long the 
light had faded from his eyes, no cloud ever 
rested on the mental vision of the prophet. 

"And now he has passed from Death unto 
Life. 

"In the words he loved so well, 'He asked life 
of Thee, and Thou gavest him life forevermore.' " 

In order to give the reader an idea of Dr. Ved- 
der's versatility, a short address delivered at one 
of the anniversary dinners of the New England 
Society and two poems conclude this sketch. 

In an armiversary address he said : 

" To say that the Pilgrims were not faultless is 
but to say that they were human. But their very 
faults were so far from being vices that they were 
virtues in excess and exaggeration; they were 
extremes, certain of rebounding to the mean 
which circumstances had made them overpass. 
Certain tremendous aspects of truth were so 



66 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

exclusively contemplated as to secure their com- 
plements and correlatives. They were momen- 
tarily dazed by looking upon the sun. But even 
the acknowledged defects of the forefathers had 
their elements of sublimity whilst enshrining 
within themselves the principles of their own cor- 
rection. If they seemed to fear more than they 
loved God, it was because they would have every 
safeguard against merely sentimental piety. If 
they were intolerant toward others, they were 
even more unsparing toward themselves. We 
may take larger views now, but even their views 
were larger than those the world took elsewhere. 
We may take larger views now, under a wider and 
clearer firmament of knowledge and intercourse, 
but they were laying the corner stone of a new 
world, and it must have no speck or suspicion of 
unsoundness; they were nurturing an infant state, 
and its first steps must be such as would insure its 
right path in maturity; yea, they were sowing the 
seeds of principles whose harvest a hemisphere 
should reap, and no germ of weed or thistle must 
drop into the open furrow to choke the golden 
grain. 

"Ours may be a sunnier, but it cannot be a 
safer, faith than theirs. Ours may have a broader 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 67 

vision, but it can never see clearer than theirs the 
polar star of duty. Ours may be a more pro- 
pitious lot, but we can never weave its oppor- 
tunities into a more glorious chapter than that 
which crowns their memories. More and more 
the world sees this. There is a sentiment which 
challenges the eager suffrage of every right heart : 

Though love repine and reason chafe, 
There comes a voice without reply: 
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the Truth he ought to die.' 

"The Pilgrim heard and heeded that voice, if 
ever man did upon earth. He was not only ready 
to die but to brave far more than death for con- 
viction; and therefore wherever the just, the 
true, the good, the brave, the self-sacrificing, the 
generous, the noble are, of every land, of every 
tongue, of every lineage, there is an ever-extending 
throng who claim the honor of a common kinship 
in men who illustrated their common humanity, 
and whose voices blend with yours in perfect har- 
mony of acclaim in saying, ' The day we celebrate.' 
Can you then too sacredly cherish that patrimony 
of memory which does not become less but more 
yours, because to it virtue everywhere covets and 
seeks to establish some claim of mutual heirship ? 



68 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"As the word 'patriot' denominates anyone 
who loves his country, so the term 'New Eng- 
lander' has gone beyond the Hmits of territory, 
and embraces everyone who has the quahties 
of thrift, energy, self-sacrifice, and love. The 
New Englander is the man of persistence. 
The New Englander is the conservator of energy. 
The New Englander is the builder of railroads 
and cities, of schools and churches. He is a 
friend of the poor. The New Englander has 
done what all men respect; he has harnessed 
the ideal and the practical and made them pull 
together. 

"At one time in the late war there occurred a 
crisis in the Northern ranks. Men were wet, 
wounded, and starving, and the relief train had 
broken down — the engine had become disabled. 
In despair, the commanding general cried out, 
'Come, boys, who can fix this locomotive?' 
Instantly there stepped from the ranks a private. 
Walking up to the broken monster, he patted her 
on the shoulder and said, 'I ought to know; I 
made her. General.' If at any future time this 
nation shall become imperiled, it will be the New 
Englanders who will say, 'We made the country; 
I guess we can save her.' The brotherhood of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 69 

New England has no symbol but that of holy 
energy. It is what Emerson calls the I in power. 
It goes everywhere. Proud Charleston by the sea 
and the Golden Gate know it as well as Boston on 
her tea-steeped bay. You will never find a New 
Englander on the minus side of the great account. 
A society like this is true to its principles when it 
takes into its membership not only those of Pil- 
grim descent but also men of Pilgrim spirit, born 
a thousand miles or more from that historic mass 
of granite known as the Pilgrim Rock. 

"New Englanders are not like the Jews, con- 
tinually looking toward the Holy Land as their 
final abiding-place. But where they work is their 
Jerusalem. They have the patriotism that seemed 
to animate a colored brother whom I saw in the 
police station not many weeks ago. A special 
officer brought him in, a great deal debilitated 
from an overdose of applejack, known to a few as 
'Jersey lightning.' At any rate, the bolt had 
struck. 

"'What's your name?' asked the orderly ser- 
geant. 

" ' Dunno. Lemmy go.' 

" 'Not yet. Tell me your name first.' 

" ' Haint got no name. Lemmy go.' 



70 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"'Tell me your name and I will let you go.' 

"'I'm a poor man; haint got no name.' 

"'Not too poor to have a name. Tell me 
your name!' 

"The imperious tone seemed to recall his drift- 
ing intelligence, as with an exultant leer, he said: 

"'I'm a son of South Carolina. Now lemmy 
go.' 

"In life or death, or worse, when drunk, he 
might forget his name, but never his native state. 
Patriotism may learn a lesson even from the police 
court. Let us not forget that we are the most 
responsible people in this country." 

At the sixty-first anniversary of the New 
England Society, Dr. Vedder responded to the 
toast, "That Day and This." Dr. Vedder's 
response was a poem written after the manner of 
Hudibras, and drawing a striking and powerful 
contrast between the civilization of their fore- 
fathers — "their simple faith and true heroism, and 
their magnificent endurance" — and the achieve- 
ments of the present times. Has moral progress, 
he asked, kept pace with material greatness? 
The closing lines of this poem, which has already 
been regarded as one of Dr. Vedder's best efforts, 
were as follows: 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 71 

How much, indeed, our times could teach 

That ancient time in grace and speech! 

No lexicon of theirs had room 

For such a stunning word as "boom." 

Ironic scorn ne'er said "too thin," 

Nor plumed itself a choice "hair-pin," 

Or answered some misdoubting elf, 
"You know, of course, how it is yourself." 

No satire's force caught all its zest 

In bidding man "adjust his vest," 

Or "Hire a hall," "mouchoir his chin" — 

Or classic phrase to these akin. 

No Pilgrim lip did ever straddle 

Such words as "mosey" or "skedaddle." 
" Spondoolics " were no name for lucre. 

Nor did men call deceiving "euchre." 

They had, perhaps, not thought it fit 

To bid a man "git up and git." 

To die then owned death's dread effects — 

'Tis now but "passing in your checks." 

And yet, methinks, to serious thought. 

The terms to later language taught 

May argue poverty, not wealth; 

May symptomize disease, not health! 

The current deep hath noiseless flow — 

The pebbly shallows babbhng go; 

The empty drum gives clash and clang, 

The empty minds give trash and slang. 

The solvent bank on gold upbuilt 

Has genuine coin, not glittering gilt — 

The scheme no panic fear can shock 

No issue has of watered stock. 



72 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Each Pilgrim phrase as they defined it, 

Had grand reserves of sense behind it. 

Where speech with senseless sound is fraught, 

Be sure it tokens bankrupt thought; 

Its over-issued scrip of phrase 

No dividend of meaning pays; 

Its sm.all change currency of talk 

Of specie payment truth will balk. 

To get, would sure be no disaster, 

Old Pilgrim gold for this shinplaster. 

Their earnest, honest yea and nay 

Said all they meant or sought to say, 

And if, with sober, soulful speech, 

That ancient day our day could teach 

Its hate of sin, its dread of wrong. 

In fear of God, undimmed and strong. 

Ah, then, were we more blessed than they. 

And then were this Time's halcyon day-r- 

For, clothed with strength they did not know, 

Our bettered world that strength would show! 

Then, progress, progess were, indeed. 

As safe in step, as swift in speed! 

That this may be, we hope and pray, 

For this we keep Forefathers' Day! 

During the Civil War Dr. Vedder was an 
ardent sympathizer with the Southern cause, 
serving as chaplain of the state soldiery in General 
de Saussure's brigade, and after the conflict serv- 
ing as chaplain of Camp A. Burnet Rhett, United 
Confederate Veterans. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 73 

The following poem was written for Confed- 
erate Memorial Day and has been read a number 
of times on similar occasions: 

Why mourn the dead whose ashes lie 

Enshrined in native sod, 
Who thought it sweet and right to die 

For Hberty and God ? 

Ah! Not to question God's behest 

That made their valor vain, 
And not to break the honored rest 

Of martyr brothers slain. 
And not to wish that they had feared 

Their duty's call to heed, 

But saved the lives to us endeared 

With timid soul and deed! 
Ah, no! Ah, no! The bloodiest shroud 

That wraps their precious clay 

Were purple royal, rich and proud, 

Compared with shame's array. 
And laurel, by their sisters brought 

And brothers crowned their dust, 
To hail the cause for which they fought 

As overborne, though just. 

These mounds of earth such virtues tell 

In men who wore the Gray, 
As bid us live as bravely well 

And stainless die as they. 



74 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Their dust with tenderest pathos pleads, 
From 'neath each voiceless stone 

That we should make life's noblest deeds 
The mould to shape our own! 



The ninth president of the New England 
Society is the author of this history and a descend- 
ant of Henry Way, original settler, Dorchester, 
Massachusetts, 1630. 




JUUOKtUGt. CKUi-tStK 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 75 



DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS 
MARTIN LUTHER HURLBUT 

" Martin Luther Hurlbut was born at South- 
ampton, Massachusetts, May i, 1780. His boy- 
hood was spent on a farm, where he assisted his 
parents in earning a modest Hving. 

"His education was such as is usually bestowed 
upon the village boys of New England, but his 
mind, early and deeply impressed with the value 
of knowledge, pressed forward to its attainment 
with a vigor and steadiness never relaxed through 
his long life. At an early age he entered Wilhams 
College and there received such instruction as the 
then limited means of that institution could 
afford. After graduation in 1804, he continued 
and completed under the roof of the venerable 
Dr. Appleton the studies appropriate for the 
Christian ministry, upon which he had resolved to 
enter. The tenets which had been instilled into 
his mind from childhood were Calvinistic, and 
such was his profession of faith. To one, how- 
ever, of such a clear and forcible intellect, and 
withal of so true, pure, and loving a heart, the 



76 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

inconsistencies of the system were apparent, and 
the appalling injustice of its leading tenets jarred 
strangely on his soul. Then ensued the long 
struggle of the spirit and the custom, not resolved 
into a solid, unwavering certainty for many years. 
A disease from which he never fully recovered 
having compelled him to abandon the pulpit, he 
devoted himself to the tasks of a teacher. The 
slight traces in possession of his family scarcely 
mark the outline of his life at this period until 
about 1807, when he resided in Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire. There in the admirable society 
which that place afforded and in the intimate 
converse with minds of high order, some of which 
still illuminate the country, he trained and culti- 
vated the powers of his mind and won a high posi- 
tion as a classical and general scholar. But this 
state of things was, like the few other sunny spots 
of his life, but of short duration. He was driven 
by pulmonary complaints to seek a more southern 
clime and, after a short visit to South America, 
settled in Beaufort, South Carolina, as the presi- 
dent of a college established in that place. His 
character and unrivaled skill in imparting knowl- 
edge soon attached to him many friends, who 
adhered to him notwithstanding the fierce political 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 77 

animosities dividing the country upon the subject 
of the approaching war. Robert W. Barnwell, 
who was graduated with first honor at Harvard 
University in the class of 1821, of which Ralph 
Waldo Emerson was a member, and who subse- 
quently became United States Senator from 
South Carolina and president of the South Caro- 
lina College, and John A. Stuart, a distinguished 
editor of the Charleston Mercury, were pupils of 
Mr. Hurlbut at Beaufort. Here, too, he formed 
an attachment, concluded by marriage with 
Miss Lydia Bunce. In 181 5 he removed to the 
city of Charleston, whither his reputation had 
preceded him, and commanded for him a school 
unequaled perhaps in number, and from which 
issued many of the brightest ornaments of the 
present time in that city, and in the state. Among 
Mr. Hurlbut's pupils in Charleston was Stephen 
Elliot, who afterward became the first bishop of 
the Episcopal Church in the state of Georgia. 

"For a long series of years his reputation and 
usefulness continued to increase, and his eminent 
abilities ripened with time and extended farther 
and farther his acquisitions. But his health, never 
firm, yielded more and more to the incessant labor 
of his profession and the influence of climate. 



78 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Added to this, numerous and severe private afflic- 
tions bent him to the earth. A wife tenderly loved, 
child after child dear to the affections and full of 
bright promise and proud hope, perished around 
him. He was persuaded that change of residence, 
the more bracing air of a northern clime, would en- 
due him with more strength to fulfil his duties and 
prolong an existence most important to his de- 
pendent family. He had married again, in 1823, 
Miss Margaret Morford, of Princeton, New Jersey, 
who fulfilled a mother's duty to the children of his 
first marriage. With her and those who still 
remained to form the family circle, he moved to 
Philadelphia, where he established a school for 
boys. Horace Howard Furness, who became 
famous as a Shakespearean scholar and legal 
writer, was a student in this school. 

"But it is from his connection with Unitarian 
Christianity that peculiar mention is here due to 
Mr. Hurlbut. He was, in truth, among the most 
efficient in establishing the Unitarian congrega- 
tion in Charleston, and frequently lent his aid to 
the defense and maintenance of the positions he 
believed. Having himself by many struggles 
arrived at the truth and cast off the domination of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 79 

custom and education, he was fully master of the 
subject and an admirable guide to those who were 
still uncertain of the road. Nor can this influ- 
ence of his be better sketched than in the words of 
a funeral discourse pronounced by the Reverend 
Dr. Oilman in the Unitarian Church of Charleston, 
upon receipt of the news of his death. 

"'Although educated a Calvinist, and having 
commenced preaching in the belief of that religious 
denomination, yet his mind had long been gradu- 
ally assuming more liberal views of Christianity. 
He had been an associate of the youthful and elo- 
quent Buckminster, and was intimate with the 
excellent Dr. Parker, of Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
shire. Accordingly he entered with the fullest 
and most active sympathy into all the struggles, 
principles, and conduct of the Reverend Mr. 
Forster. When Mr. Forster felt constrained to 
promulgate those views of Unitarian Christianity 
which resulted in the separation of this church, he 
was countenanced and supported in the most 
effectual manner by Mr. Hurlbut, who, in con- 
junction with the late Judge Lee, Mr. Hugh 
Paterson, and several other votaries of religious 
liberty, secured the existence, establishment, and 



8o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

subsequent prosperity of this religious society. 
He was willing to stake his popularity, his stand- 
ing, and his prospects of future support on a cause 
which he deemed to involve the best and dearest 
interests of society, and which, from profound 
and patient study, he felt convinced was identical 
\\'ith all necessary and fundamental religious 
truth. Few of you who are now enjoying in quiet 
your spiritual privileges can appreciate the degree 
of Christian heroism required to introduce a new 
modification of religion against the prejudices, 
convictions, and opposition of a whole community. 
But with all the tremulous uncertainty of the 
experiment, Mr. Hurlbut and his coadjutors man- 
fully took the stand. He defended the ark in 
which were deposited his most precious spiritual 
treasures by his tongue, by his pen, by his sub- 
stance, by the sacrifice of his ease, and the exposure 
of all those earthly blessings, which less disinter- 
ested men imagine are the first to be looked after. 
He wrote several impressive essays in the Uni- 
tarian Defendant in 1822. He published a charm- 
ing life of Mr. Forster; and he still continued to 
enlighten and favor the public by several essays 
inserted in the Christian Examiner and among 
the tracts of the American Unitarian Association. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 8i 

But it was not so much by his active public 
exertions or by the multipHcation of his feHcitous 
writings as by the experimental workings of reli- 
gion in his interior character that Mr. Hurlbut 
deserved the epithet of "godly." He cherished a 
habitual, living, perceptible sense of the Divine 
government in the world. You could not be 
acquainted with him without recognizing the 
power and beauty of his faith. I never saw and 
I never read, in any instance of an uninspired 
character, of the sentiment of religion employed 
so availably, so efficaciously, so successfully, and 
even so triumphantly, against the mighty inroads 
of affliction and adversity, as in the case of him 
to whom these brief and imperfect notices are 
devoted. Storm after storm of disaster fell upon 
him; child after child of extraordinary and pre- 
cocious promise was snatched from his embrace; 
year after year of pain, debility, and disease 
seemed to drag him through existence, yet still 
you found him erect, elastic, calm, cheerful even, 
for his soul amidst every earthquake had leaned 
palpably upon its God. This was not stoical 
indifference, for he had the keen susceptibilities 
of a child. It was the power of his clear and 
deliberate faith. Thus he continued to the last. 



82 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Death came upon him unexpectedly indeed, but 
took him not by surprise. He calmly made his 
preparations as for a journey of tomorrow morn- 
ing, ^^ I shall soon he with them," he said, alluding 
to the departed spirits of his family. Wearied 
and shattered, but not crushed or subdued, the 
hero of many a mighty moral struggle, the sym- 
pathizing follower of Him who was the man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief, he wrapped his 
drapery around him, and after a pilgrimage of 
sixty-three years, he fell asleep, or rather he 
awoke to an eternal existence.' 

"Such is some outline of the life of one whose 
desert was that of a retiring nature, whose pur- 
suits and habits were so secluded and domestic 
that they claimed and received none of that 
public and popular reward which the force of cir- 
cumstances frequently bestows upon lesser attain- 
ments. His light never shone in public except 
when struck out by collision with what he con- 
ceived popular error, and only on rare occasions 
did he put forth his powers. The strength of his 
intellect and the solidity of his moral faculties 
were only equaled by the depth of his affections; 
and hence resulted a character of rare balance and 
harmony fully equipped either to act or to suffer. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 83 

"He has fought the good fight and left to those 
whose career has not yet closed ' the memory of 
a weU-spent life.' To those who knew him and 
regarded him, in the words of his Master, we 
would say, 'If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, 
because I go to the Father.'" 

The above quotation is, with the insertion of a 
few facts, from the Christian Examiner for Sep- 
tember, 1843. 

Mr. Hurlbut became a member of the New 
England Society, April 7, 1819, the year the 
Society was organized. 

In 1828 Mr. Hurlbut published an anonymous 
brochure — a very strong constitutional argument 
against nullification, entitled Review of a Late 
Pamphlet, under the signature of "Brutus." 
"Brutus" was R. J. TumbuU. 

Two of Mr. Hurlbut 's sons became distin- 
guished: Major- General Stephen Augustus Hurl- 
but of the Union Army, a son of his first marriage; 
and William Henry Hurlbut, the founder and first 
editor of the New York World, a son of his second 
marriage. 

Mr. Hurlbut died in Philadelphia, Pennsyl- 
vania, January 17, 1843. 



84 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

WILLIAM CRAFTS, JR. 

William Crafts, Jr., was born in Charleston, 
South Carolina, January 24, 1787. His ancestors 
came to Charleston from Boston, Massachusetts. 
William Crafts, Sr., was for many years an emi- 
nent merchant of Charleston and one of the 
founders of the New England Society. William 
Crafts, Jr., was graduated from Harvard at the 
early age of eighteen. He returned to Charleston 
and began the study of law, and was admitted to 
the bar four years later. He was elected a mem- 
ber of the House of Representatives of South 
Carolina in 181 1 and again ini8i3. Ini8i7, just 
twelve years after his graduation, young Crafts 
was selected as the Phi Beta Kappa Orator at 
Harvard, which was an exceptional honor. His 
oration on that occasion evoked scholarly com- 
mendation. He was passionately fond of citizen 
soldiership, and at an early age became com- 
mander of the Washington Light Infantry, a 
corps originating before the War of 181 2 and 
which has fought heroically in every war in which 
this nation has been involved for over one hundred 
years. William Lowndes was the first comman- 
der of this gallant military company. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 85 

William Crafts, Jr., became a member of the 
New England Society in 1819. 

He died at the age of thirty-nine. At the 
time of his death he was a member of the state 
senate, where he had rendered conspicuous service 
since 1820. 

In an address delivered before the Charleston 
Library Association upon the occasion of the pres- 
entation of a portrait of William Crafts, Jr., as 
jurist, orator, scholar, and legislator, the Honor- 
able J. W. Barnwell said: 

"He entered life under the most favorable 
auspices. 'He was admired,' says Hugh Legare, 
who knew him well, 'even to idolatry, for his 
talents and accomplishments — honored with the 
confidence of the virtuous and the attentions of 
the fashionable and the gay — and seeming to have 
at his command whatever could gratify the 
fondest ambition of an aspiring young man.' 

"These bright promises were never fulfilled. 
The lack of habits of industry, the fondness for 
convivial society, the choice of the losing side in 
politics, for he was a Federalist in his views, pre- 
vented his short life from being successful and he 
died with his ambition ungratified. 



86 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

" His literary work, so far as we now know it, is 
contained in a volume, containing a selection from 
his miscellaneous writings. It consists of orations 
and addresses delivered on various occasions, fugi- 
tive pieces contributed to the newspapers of the 
day, and verses published from time to time. The 
orations are more ornate and metaphorical than 
the taste of the present more severe and prosaic 
age approves, yet, aided by his melodious voice 
and pleasing manner, doubtless deserved the 
applause which they assuredly received. Legare, 
whose criticism of his work in the Southern Review 
is certainly severe, nevertheless thus describes a 
speech delivered in the South Carolina legislature 
on the impeachment of a minor judicial officer for 
injustice and oppression: 

" 'We shall never forget his manner of deliver- 
ing that speech, which, for a young man, was truly 
admirable and has in some respects probably never 
been surpassed on that floor. His shrill but musi- 
cal voice, elevated to a thrilling pitch, his fine 
countenance animated with the ardor of debate, 
that perfect grace and decorum of his gesticula- 
tion, free from all constraint or artifice, the 
unaffected elegance and manly simplicity of his 
diction, the clearness of his statements, the close- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 87 

ness and cogency of his reasonings, the apparent 
disinterestedness of his zeal, his lofty indignation 
against injustice, the vigor and perseverance with 
which he maintained his ground in the debate 
against a formidable array of talent and influ- 
ence — all conspired to give earnest of a high de- 
gree of excellence at a more advanced period of life. 

" 'His noblest effort, however, was, I think, in 
behalf of the free schools of the state, when an 
attempt was made to suspend the appropriation 
for that purpose during the War of 181 2. He 
spoke as follows: 

" ' "Who that has seen man in a high state of 
improvement, in the midst of the arts and sciences, 
actuated by the desire and blessed with the means 
of usefulness, full of noble ambition and gaining 
in their turn all its honorable rewards, who, I say, 
can appreciate the immense disparity between 
such an individual and the unhappy being, born 
and living and dying in penury and ignorance ? 

" ' "Sir, my compassion is always painfully 
excited by the condition of many of the country 
people whom I see on my journey here. Without 
education themselves, or the means of imparting 
it to their children, how many sources of happi- 
ness and utility to them are forever closed ! How 



88 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

much of intellect is there running wild and waste ! 
How much of manly ardor and sensibility, with- 
out an object to elicit them! How much help- 
lessness against the misfortunes of life ! How much 
of the vice and misery which are the lot of igno- 
rance ! 

" ' "In several of their lowly cottages I have 
seen signs of those mental fires that are doomed to 
struggle in vain for exercise and display. I have 
seen beauty buried in obscurity, as in a premature 
grave, and genius, unconscious of its aims or its 
powers, indolent and useless. 

" ' "As I pitied their situation, I was delighted 
with their reply, when we addressed these humble 
inhabitants of the woods and proffered the 
means of instruction on behalf of the state; we 
were as wise as we were liberal. We consulted 
their happiness not more than the state's. We 
unveiled to them their duties and their rights. 
We extended the horizon of their hopes and their 
views. We opened to them a new world, hitherto 
occupied by the rich almost exclusively; and, 
rescuing them from their obscure destiny, we 
bade them aspire after all the needs of emulation. 

" * "If we abolish free schools, let the eagle be 
removed from over your head, Mr. Speaker. It is 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 89 

the image of a bird that Hves upon light. It can- 
not endure darkness. Either shroud it in mourn- 
ing, or send it away." ' 

"In memory of his efforts in behalf of educa- 
tion, one of the public schools in our city has been 
given his name. 

"The poetry of Crafts meets the approval 
neither of Legare nor of Professor Trent, and yet 
I venture to agree with Mr. Lewisohn in his inter- 
esting articles on the literature of South Carolina 
when he says with regard to some of it that no 
verse more graceful or tender had been written in 
America up to that time, and none more surely 
deserves a place in any anthology of early Ameri- 
can poetry, and I select for quotation the extract 
given by him: 

The snowdrop is in bloom, 
And the young earth's perfume 
Scents new the floating air; 
It is the breath of love — 
Beneath, around, above, 
Young love is there. 
Come let us try to snare him — see. 
Love smiling waits for you and me. 
Bind him with the jasmine flower, 
Hide him in a myrtle bower, 
On the thornless roses let him rest; 
See his gracious eyelids move. 



QO THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Hope and joy are eyes of love, 
Kiss them and be blest. 
Love gives his own dear heart to thee, 
One-haK for you, one-half for me, 

" Of course, South Carolina at the beginning of 
the last century was not Greece or Rome, or Eng- 
land or France, or Italy or Germany — but in com- 
parison with early American verse of the kind 
Crafts does not suffer." 

At the second anniversary dinner of the New 
England Society of Charleston, December 22, 
1820, William Crafts, Jr., delivered the following 
address: 

"On this day, two hundred years ago, a handful 
of individuals landed at an inclement season, on an 
unknown and barren coast; in the land of pesti- 
lence, on the territory of the savage. Fraud or 
accident had diverted the course of their voyage, 
and they were placed beyond the protection, weak 
as it was, of European charters. Neither the 
Church nor the State accorded them the privilege 
of monopoly or of participation, and they landed 
with no better plea than their necessities, and no 
protector but their God. 

" Providence was not unmindful of them. That 
they might with scrupulous honesty occupy the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 91 

soil, its former inhabitants had perished by dis- 
ease or wandered into exile; that they might in 
infancy be secure from Indian warfare, the natives 
had been withdrawn from the seashore; and lest 
famine should involve them in early ruin, the 
scanty granaries of the savage became the treasure- 
trove of the stranger. The soil was rugged and 
mountainous, indicating the labor and persever- 
ance which its culture required. It had not the 
baneful reputation of gold and silver mines, the 
cheap ruin of adventurers and nations. It was 
primitive and virginal, like the snows that invested 
it. Scarce a path on its surface but the track of 
the hunter and his game, scarce a sound in its 
forests but the rude chorus of the winds. 

"Well may we ask what worldly inducement 
impelled this little band of men, women, and 
children, away from their friends and their home, 
in a little barque, across the perilous ocean, to an 
ice-bound, rocky shore. Was it ambition — that 
master-passion of the human breast that knows 
no difficulties in the pursuit of power ? To charge 
them with ambition were to accuse them of 
lunacy. Was it avarice — that chameleon curse 
of our nature, which assimilates us to aU climates 
and all suffering in pursuit of gain ? They had no 



92 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

means to traffic and no arms to plunder. Were 
they convicts, doomed to expiate among the 
savage their sins among the civihzed ? They had 
been sinned against, not sinned themselves. It 
was that sense of wrong which he who feels it at 
all feels most acutely, and forgives never. It was 
that species of oppression which he who endures 
all else never will endure, that gave birth to this 
desperate and heroic enterprise. You may invade 
a man's opinions, one by one, and dispossess him 
of them all, until you interfere with his religious 
sentiments and his rights of conscience. You 
then strike a spring whose elasticity increases 
with its pressure, rallying every other power in 
the system and quickening the motion of them aU. 
You provoke his love of truth — his regard for 
early impressions— his sense of duty — his hopes of 
happiness — his pride— his zeal — his obstinacy — 
his chagrin and his resentment. He who would 
willingly encounter these knows nothing of the 
lessons of history. It appears to be the decree 
of God that religious persecution shall avail its 
authors only shame and remorse, while it endows 
its victims with extraordinary courage, insures 
them the Divine protection, and fits them for 
heroic suffering and achievement. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 93 

"The ancestors of New England, driven from 
their home by the persecution of Laud, after a 
short residence in Holland, where religious and 
political discussions prevailed with much force 
and freedom, embarked for America in the hope 
of enjoying religious liberty, if not at home, yet 
under the authority of their monarch. They 
asked his license to live in an uncomfortable 
wilderness, crowded with dangers; but so obnox- 
ious were their doctrines and so slighted their 
loyalty that they were refused protection and 
only promised indifference. They came, however, 
and the treachery of the Dutch, who had furnished 
them a refuge, caused them to be landed far north 
of their original destination. 

"Houseless, frozen, miserable outcasts! Why 
not forsake your hopeless enterprise, and leave 
the great men of the earth the costly office of 
planting colonies, enlightening the heathen, and 
taming the savage ? 

"'It was not,' to use their own language, 'with 
us as with common men, whom smaU things could 
discourage or small discontents cause to wish to 
be again at home.' They formed on board their 
ship a plan of civil and political government, a 
strict and 'sacred bond to take care of the good 



94 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

of the whole,' and disembarked with a fearless 
intrepidity, inspired by conscience and justified 
by Heaven. 

"If on this day, after the lapse of two cen- 
turies, one of the Fathers of New England, 
released from the sleep of death, could reappear 
on earth, what would be his emotions of joy and 
wonder! In lieu of a wilderness, here and there 
interspersed with soHtary cabins, where hfe was 
scarcely worth the danger of preserving it, he 
would behold joyful harvests, a population 
crowded even to satiety — villages, towns, cities, 
states, swarming with industrious inhabitants, 
hills graced with temples of devotion, and valleys 
vocal with the early lessons of virtue. Casting 
his eye on the ocean, which he past in fear and 
trembling, he would see it covered with enterpris- 
ing fleets returning with the whale as their captive, 
and the wealth of the Indies for their cargo. He 
would behold the little colony which he planted 
grown into gigantic stature and forming an honor- 
able part of a glorious confederacy, the pride of 
the earth and the favorite of Heaven. He would 
witness with exaltation the general prevalence of 
correct principles of government and virtuous 
habits of action; how gladly would he gaze upon 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 95 

the long stream of light and renown from Har- 
vard's classic fount, and the kindred springs of 
Yale, of Providence, of Dartmouth, and of Bruns- 
wick. Would you fill his bosom with honest 
pride, tell him of Franklin, who made the thunder 
sweet music and the lightning innocent fireworks 
— of Adams, the venerable sage reserved by 
heaven, himself a blessing, to witness its blessings 
on our nation — of Ames, whose tongue became 
and has become an angel's — of Perry, 

Blest by his God with one illustrious day, 
A blaze of glory, ere he passed away. 

"And tell him: Pilgrim of Plymouth, these 
are thy descendants. Show him the stately struc- 
tures, the splendid benevolence, the masculine 
intellect, and the sweet hospitality of the metropo- 
lis of New England. Show him that immortal 
vessel whose name is synonymous with triumph 
and each of her masts a scepter. Show him the 
glorious fruits of his humble enterprise and ask 
him if this, all this, be not an atonement for his 
suffering, a recompense for his toils, a blessing on 
his efforts, and a heart-expanding triumph for the 
Pilgrim adventurer. And if he be proud of his 
offspring, well may they boast of their parentage. 



96 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"The descendants of New England, wherever 
situated, must regard with sympathy the land of 
their ancestors and look back with pride upon 
their common origin. The statesman can find no 
brighter example of union, strength, and harmony 
than that under which these early associates 
grew into celebrity and power. They knew no 
sectional divisions, they were one — the strong 
supporting the weak, the weak confiding in the 
strong. They were wise, but alas, wisdom belongs 
to poverty and danger, and not to pride or 
prosperity." 

WILLIAM JOHN GRAYSON, JR. 

William John Grayson, Jr., was born in Beau- 
fort, South Carolina, November lo, 1788. He 
was graduated from the South Carolina College in 
1809, studied law, and entered upon its practice 
in his native town. He was a many-sided man — 
he possessed the rare capacity of doing many dif- 
ferent things and doing them well. 

He was successively a commissioner in equity 
of South Carolina, a member of the legislature, 
and state senator. 

Mr. Grayson opposed the Tariff Act in 1831. 
He served two terms in Congress and afterward 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 97 

became collector of customs of the port of Charles- 
ton. He joined the New England Society in 1841 
and was prominent in its deliberations. 

During the secession agitations of 1850, Mr. 
Grayson published "A Letter to Governor Sea- 
brook," deprecating disunion, and with cogent 
argument he pointed out the evils that would 
certainly follow it. In addition to his political 
prominence, Mr. Grayson was a literateur of 
attainments. Among his publications were The 
Hireling and Slave, The Country, Chicora and 
Other Poems, and The Life of James Lewis Petigru. 

He was also a patron of art. Through his in- 
fluence a number of art exhibitions were brought to 
Charleston from the more advanced art centers of 
the United States. 

His portrait hangs in the Charleston Library 
as one of the representative men of letters of 
South Carolina. 

He died in Newberry, South Carolina, Octo- 
ber 4, 1865. 

SAMUEL GILMAN 

The Reverend Samuel Gilman was a national 
character. When he died in 1858 there was 
scarcely a newspaper or periodical of prominence 



98 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

in the United States which did not publish a 
sketch of his well-spent life. The appreciation 
which follows is taken essentially from the New 
York Tribune: 

"The decease of the Reverend Dr. Gilman, of 
Charleston, South Carolina, is announced as 
having taken place on Monday, February 8, 
at Kingston, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 
where he was on a visit for his health at the resi- 
dence of his son-in-law, the Reverend C. J. 
Bowen. Dr. Gilman was widely known in New 
England, of which he was a native, and in his 
adopted state of South Carolina as a scholar of 
singularly varied attainments, an able and impres- 
sive preacher, a writer of a rare and delicate 
humor, as well as of masculine sense and classical 
taste, and a man whom it was difficult not to 
admire for his uncommon social qualities, his 
large catholicity of view, and his gracious and 
conciliatory bearing. He was born February i6, 
1 791, in the old town of Gloucester, Massachu- 
setts, where his father had been a wealthy mer- 
chant, but by a sudden reverse of fortune left his 
family dependent on their own resources. 

"At an early age he became a member of the 
household of the Reverend Samuel Peabody, of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 99 

Atkinson, New Hampshire, whose quaint primi- 
tive ways are described with inimitable humor in 
a biographical sketch by Mr. Oilman, published 
in the Christian Examiner. He entered Harvard 
College in 1807, and after the usual course of 
study was graduated in a class which numbers 
among its members many names of the most 
honorable distinction in Church and State. With 
such competitors as Edward Everett, Reverend 
Dr. Frothingham, Judge B. F. Dunkin, and others 
who have since become widely celebrated, he 
obtained honors of a high order, and after com- 
pleting his professional studies was appointed to 
an office in the university which he filled with 
success until 1819, when he accepted an invitation 
to become the pastor of the Unitarian Church, in 
Charleston, South Carolina. He was soon after 
ordained, and for nearly forty years labored in the 
position in which he was placed in early manhood. 
"During his residence in Cambridge he was 
a frequent contributor to the North American 
Review, in which periodical his papers are marked 
by their polished elegance of diction, the grace and 
felicity of their illustrations, and their racy 
humor. After his removal to Charleston he 
continued to write for different periodicals, his 



lOO THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

contributions embracing a wide range of subjects, 
from profound philosophical discussions to spar- 
kling satirical essays. A selection of these was 
published in a volume a few years since, and now 
forms an appropriate memorial of his fame. 
Among his productions the "Recollections of a 
New England Village Choir" has perhaps become 
the most generally popular. For apt logical 
description, a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a 
happy intuition of characteristic peculiarities, it 
has seldom been matched in the humorous litera- 
ture of this country. 

"Dr. Gilman also possessed the gift of poetry, 
which he cultivated with no inconsiderable suc- 
cess. He had luxuriant fancy, an excellent com- 
mand of natural imagery, and great fluency of 
expression, though no one could claim for him 
the higher powers of imagination or depth of 
passion. 

"As a pulpit orator he was affectionate and 
persuasive, equally removed from languor and 
vehemence, never boisterous, but always in 
earnest, loving the sphere of universal ethics 
rather than the subtleties of sectarian doctrine, 
and commending the great lessons he taught by 
the shining and noble example of his private life. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA lOi 

His influence was not confined within the precincts 
of his own church but spread a kindly and attrac- 
tive atmosphere in the midst of strenuous theo- 
logical differences. Although his natural tastes 
would perhaps have inclined him more strongly 
to an academic or a purely literary life than to 
the clerical profession, he never shrank from the 
most faithful allegiance to the duties of his calling. 
Succeeding a man of rare endowments and admir- 
able personal traits, he soon won not only the 
devoted affection of his charge, but the esteem of 
the whole community to which he came as a 
stranger but where he was at once recognized as a 
friend. His occasional visits to the home of his 
youth kept his ancient intimacies unbroken; old 
associations were preserved amid the excitement 
of novel scenes and fresh interests; and now that 
he has passed away, his remembrance will be 
tenderly cherished both by those to whom he 
devoted the maturity of his strength, and those 
among whom he has found a grave." 

Mr. A. S. Willington, editor of the Courier, 
and president of the New England Society, paid 
the following tribute to the memory of Dr. Gilman: 

"The sudden removal from us of the Rev- 
erend Samuel Gilman, D.D., has called forth the 



I02 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

startled sorrow and profoundest grief of the com- 
munity in which, for almost half a century, he 
had lived the life and illustrated the example of a 
Christian pastor, and in all respects and relations 
so meek and gentle and lovable, so disinterestedly 
alive to the calls of courtesy and charity, so 
actively and efficiently identified with the literary 
culture and social amenities of our city that his 
decease will cast a shadow far beyond the pale of 
the congregation which has grown up under his 
teachings. We of Charleston all knew and loved 
him, and we had grown to think him so utterly 
and entirely our own that we had hoped uncon- 
sciously that even the inevitable message would 
have found and reached him in our midst and 
amid the scenes and calls of duty wherein his life 
has passed in honor and instructive example. 
We are startled that he so loved and honored 
should be thus taken, and we are more startled 
that the call should have found him far from us 
and from the home of his active and well-stored 
life. 

"It will be the melancholy office of the citi- 
zens of Charleston, in varied relations and asso- 
ciations, to do honor to such exemplary worth and 
merits, and to abler — not more loving — hands, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 103 

and to moments and occasions of more matured 
reflection, we commit and defer the offices of a 
more adequate tribute. 

"We cannot, however, omit the sad occasion 
of stating and acknowledging the pleasures and 
benefits and delightful fruits of a long and intimate 
intercourse and acquaintance with our departed 
friend, who so happily illustrated all that the 
ancient moralists have taught us of friendship in 
its purest forms, and added withal the crowning 
graces and charms of the Christian life, example, 
and character. 

"It has fallen within the editorial province of 
the Courier, at frequent intervals within the 
forty years which enclosed Dr. Oilman's residence 
and service among us, to give mention and proof 
of his active sympathy and zealous co-operation 
in all great and worthy purposes and projects of 
social, municipal, literary, moral, or religious 
advancement. It is scarcely six years since an 
interesting epoch in his pastoral relation — the 
renovation of the house of worship occupied by 
his beloved and loving parishioners — gave us an 
occasion to notice at some length his influence 
and services in our community. This character- 
istically appropriate discourse, full of patriarchal 



I04 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

reminiscences and paternal instruction uttered, as 
was Dr. Oilman's wont, without affectation or 
assumption, was pronounced on the first Sabbath in 
April, 1852, as 'a farewell to the old church,' and 
was wrought out from the text : ' Old things have 
passed away.' With what emphasis and accent 
of sorrow will that text now be sounded forth in 
the ears and memories of bereaved and weeping 
friends, as they enter again and again their beau- 
tiful temple, now beautiful to them no more in 
the absence of him whose ministry and teachings 
were its most cherished adjuncts. From this 
discourse we gather a few facts, which will furnish 
melancholy interest at this occasion. 

"Dr. Oilman received his pastoral call early 
in 18 19, as successor to the Reverend Anthony M. 
Forster. After a few months of probationary 
service, he was confirmed and duly installed in 
the pastorate of the Unitarian or Second Inde- 
pendent Church of this city — the services being 
performed in part by Reverend Jared Sparks, 
D.D., LL.D. In the interim, the young pastor 
had been united in the only tie dearer and nearer 
to him than the vinculum of the pastorate — to her 
who was for nearly twoscore years a helpmate in 
life and example in labor and pursuits, and is now 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 105 

the chief mourner and stricken participant in an 
ecHpse of grief, into whose sacred shadow we dare 
not intrude. 

"Since that day, the Hfe, labors, actions, and 
example of Samuel Oilman have been before this 
community and 'known and read' by us all. Up 
to the date of this discourse referred to, he had 
administered the last sad rites of the church at 
300 graves, had recorded with the rites of baptism 
the names of 484 children and 37 adults, and had 
presided at 148 acts of marriage. 

" At a later date, and within the last year, it was 
our privilege and pleasure to offer our readers two 
of the best of all the discourses and addresses that 
have been given to the public in any form by our de- 
parted friend. We allude to the sermon preached 
on the 2 2d February, 1857, at the call of the Wash- 
ington Light Infantry, and in commemoration of 
the character of Washington. Our demonstrative 
and occasional oratory has rarely given a contri- 
bution of more sterhng value to permanent litera- 
ture. Christian oratory has never more fitly and 
impressively embodied and applied the lessons of 
any anniversary. 

"We must omit, however, the extension of this 
public tribute, for which we are unfitted by the 



io6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

startling shock of its occasion, and by the general 
gush of sorrow around us that seeks and needs 
repose and some recovery before it can take 
articulate utterance. 

"It is more fitting that we apply and digest in 
silent grief and chastened meditation the lessons 
of such a life and the mournful memories of so 
great a sorrow. 'Being dead, he yet speaketh,' 
and long shall that speech be heard in persuasive 
accents and utterances, pleading for truth and 
charity and purity and virtue, and reminding us 
all that the places which now know us shall soon 
know us no more forever." 

Dr. Oilman became a member of the New 
England Society in 1821. He was for more than 
a generation one of its most prominent members, 
serving as a member of the committee on charity 
and as chaplain. His addresses on Forefathers' 
Day were among the most classic and profound 
utterances ever delivered before the Society. 
One of the most notable was delivered just before 
his death and is incorporated in the chapter on 
the Civil War. 

In order to convey an idea of Dr. Oilman's 
devotional spirit and his poetical genius, a prayer 
offered at one of the annual celebrations of the 




A. b. WILL-ilNtj I ON 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 107 

New England Society and two representative 
poems are quoted: 

thou who art the giver of every good and perfect 
gift! We bless thee for the recurrence and the recollec- 
tions of this memorable day. We would celebrate it in 
the right spirit and with grateful hearts. We thank thee 
for the precious bequest we enjoy in the memory of our 
wise, pious, and renowned forefathers. May something 
of their pure, sublime, and self-sacrificing character be 
ours. Wilt thou be pleased to bless the associations here 
assembled! We thank thee for the good it has done, for 
the many friendships it has formed and cemented, and 
for the happy prospects that lie before us. Wilt thou 
bless the community in which we reside, and which 
received us, many of us, as strangers in a strange land, 
with a kind confidence and hospitality. May the peace 
and prosperity of this city be ever precious in thy sight. 
Wilt thou smile on the state we inhabit, and on our whole 
beloved country, and bless all the nations of the earth. 
Restore, we earnestly beseech thee, the interrupted peace 
of nations, and let the noise of cannons and of garments 
roUed in blood no longer pierce the hearts of thy children. 
We ask these things in the Redeemer's name. 

Early in 18 19 Mr. Oilman came South to 
preach as a candidate in the Second Independent 
Presbyterian Church at Charleston. He spent a 
considerable period in this city, experienced a 
severe attack of yellow fever, and was invited to 
become minister of this church. On the eve of 



io8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

his return to New England he wrote the following 
poem, which is of interest as an example of his 
poetry and as an index to his feelings both for 
Charleston and for his native New England: 

Farewell, awhile, thou hospitable spot! 
Farewell, my own adopted dwelling-place! 
Scene of my future consecrated lot 
And destined circuit of my earthly race. 

Farewell, my friends, who hung so long and true, 
With sleepless care around my fevered bed, 
And ye from whom a stranger's title drew 
Profuse attentions, delicately shed. 

Yet why a stranger ? Since no other home 
Remains for me; e'en now, depressed, I fly 
For the last time through youthful haunts to roam, 
And snatch the breezes from my native sky. 

Yes, dear New England! Help me from my breast 
To wean these childish yearnings, ere we part; 
Help me these cords to snap, these ties to wrest, 
So wound and stamped and woven in my heart. 

A few more bounds along thy rocky shore, 
A few more pensive walks among thy streams, 
A few more greetings from dear friends of yore, 
A few more dreams — and then, no more of dreams. 

Come sacred, solid duty! At thy call 

My cheerful will submissively shall flow; 

So, thou great source of strength and light to all, 

Lead me the awful way my feet must go. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 109 

Teach me to bear the Christian herald's part, 
To set the slaves of sin and error free, 
To guide each doubting, soothe each aching, heart. 
And draw a listening, willing flock to thee. 

FAIR HARVARD 

Composed by Dr. Samuel Oilman, and sung 
at the centennial celebration of Harvard Univer- 
sity, September 8, 1836. 

The following year Harvard conferred upon 
Mr. Oilman the honorary degree of Doctor of 
Divinity. 

Fair Harvard! thy sons to thy jubilee throng. 

And with blessings surrender thee o'er. 

By these festival-rites, from the age that is past. 

To the age that is waiting before. 

O relic and type of our ancestors' worth. 

That hast long kept their memory warm ! 

First flower of their wilderness! Star of their night, 

Calm rising through change and through storm! 

To thy bowers we were led in the bloom of our youth. 

From the home of our free-roving years. 

When our fathers had warned, and our mothers had prayed, 

And our sisters had blest, through their tears. 

Thou then wert our parent — the nurse of our souls — 

We were molded to manhood by thee. 

Till, freighted with treasure-thoughts, friendships, and 

hopes. 
Thou didst launch us on Destiny's sea. 



no THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

When, as pilgrims, we come to revisit thy halls, 

To what kindhngs the season gives birth! 

Thy shades are more soothing, thy sunlight more dear. 

Than descends on less privileged earth; 

For the good and the great, in their beautiful prime, 

Through thy precincts have musingly trod. 

As they girded their spirits, or deepened the streams 

That make glad the fair City of God. 

Farewell! be thy destinies onward and bright! 

To thy children the lesson still give. 

With freedom to think, and with patience to bear. 

And for Right ever bravely to live. 

Let not moss-covered Error moor thee at its side. 

As the world on Truth's current glides by; 

Be the herald of Light, and the bearer of Love, 

Till the stock of the Puritans die. 

SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born at 
Charlestown, Massachusetts, April 27, 1791. He 
died in New York, April 2, 1872. He was gradu- 
ated from Yale in 1810 and went immediately to 
England, where he studied art with Benjamin 
West. When he returned to this country, he 
sought to establish himself in a number of Ameri- 
can cities. He came to Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, in 1 81 8 and remained in the "City by the 
Sea" for a number of years. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA iii 

In the winter of 1819 he wrote to his old pre- 
ceptor, Washington AUston: "I am painting from 
morning till night, and have continual applica- 
tions." In one year during his stay in Charleston 
Mr. Morse received more than one hundred 
orders for pictures. Among the orders he received 
was one from the city of Charleston to paint a life- 
size portrait of James Monroe, then president of 
the United States. The following notice of this 
order is taken from the Courier, April 29, 1819: 

The City Council passed a unanimous vote at a 
meeting last month that His Honor the Intendant be 
requested to solicit James Monroe, president of the 
United States, to permit a full-length likeness to be 
taken for the city of Charleston, and that Mr. S. F. B. 
Morse be requested to take all necessary measures for 
executing the said likeness on the visit of the President 
to this city. 

The request has been made by the Intendant to the 
President, who was pleased to grant his permission, but, 
on account of his limited stay and multiplicity of engage- 
ments, he would not be able to sit for his portrait while 
in Charleston. We understand that Mr. Morse has 
made arrangements with the President to take the por- 
trait in Washington, after his return from his tour. 

This portrait was painted in Washington, and 
on its completion was placed in the City Hall and 
is still in perfect condition. 



112 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Mr. Morse joined the New England Society in 
1820, the year after its organization, and was a 
regular attendant at its meetings and dinners. 

In 1823 Mr. Morse went to New York City 
and, after hiring as his studio, "a fine room on 
Broadway, opposite Trinity Church Yard," he 
continued his painting of portraits, one of the first 
being that of Chancellor Kent, which was followed 
soon afterward by a picture of Fitz-Greene 
Halleck, now in the Astor library, a full-length 
portrait of Lafayette for the city of New York, 
and a portrait of Major General Thomas Pinckney, 
of South Carolina. 

During his residence there he became associated 
with other artists in founding the New York Draw- 
ing Association, of which he was made president. 
This led in 1826 to the estabhshment of the 
National Academy of the Arts of Design, to 
include representations from the arts of painting, 
sculpture, architecture, and engraving. Morse 
was chosen its president and so remained until 
1842. He was likewise president of the Sketch 
Club, an assemblage of artists that met weekly to 
sketch for an hour, after which the time was 
devoted to entertainment. About this time he 
delivered a series of lectures on "The Fine Arts" 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 113 

before the New York Athenaeum, which are said 
to be the first on that subject in the United 
States. Thus he continued until 1829, when he 
again visited Europe for study and for three years 
resided abroad, principally in Paris and the art 
centers of Italy. 

In 1832 he discovered the electric telegraph, 
which made him so famous that his work as an 
artist has been disregarded by the average reader 
of history. 

BENJAMIN FANEUIL HUNT 

Benjamin Faneuil Hunt was born at Water- 
town, Massachusetts, February 29, 1792. His 
father was the descendant of a clergyman who 
was among the early immigrants to that state. 
His mother was a daughter of George Bethune, of 
Brighton, and Mary Faneuil, of the Huguenot 
family, one of whom gave Faneuil Hall to Boston. 
Colonel Hunt's father died in 1804, but his 
widowed mother, perceiving his talent, had him 
prepared for coUege. In 1806 he entered Har- 
vard University, where he was graduated in his 
twentieth year. 

Mr. Hunt came to Charleston in 18 10 and 
began the study of law. He entered as a student 



114 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the law office of the late Keating Lewis Simons, at 
that time one of the most distinguished orna- 
ments of the legal profession in this city. After 
two years' study he was admitted to the bar of 
Charleston at a period when it was crowded with 
eminent practitioners. Gifted with high intel- 
lectual powers and a ready and powerful rhetoric 
he at once took his place in the front rank of the 
profession. His practice was large and success- 
ful, and his professional triumphs generally, and 
especially in the defense of criminals in capital 
cases, were multipli-ed and signal. His ability 
and eloquence as an advocate soon gave him 
prominence in the field of politics, and he fre- 
quently served in the legislature of this state as 
a representative from Charleston and was always 
regarded as one of the ablest and most influential 
debaters on the floor of the House. 

The following statement concerning Mr. Hunt 
is quoted from Sketches of Eminent Americans: 

"On the declaration of War in 1812, Mr. Hunt 
aided in organizing a company which was drafted 
during the war into the service of the United 
States, and throughout its continuance faithfully 
fulfilled the responsible duties of his command. 
He successively rose through the intermediate 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 115 

grades, and about the year 18 18 was promoted to 
the colonelcy of the Sixteenth Regiment and 
served in that capacity nearly twenty years. 
Since then Mr. Hunt has been popularly and 
familiarly known as "Colonel Hunt." In his 
military position he has always manifested the 
characteristic traits of energy, fearlessness, and 
ability, both as a soldier and tactician, that had 
so signally distinguished him as a la^vyer and a 
legislator." 

Colonel Hunt became a member of the New 
England Society April 7, 1819, and for a genera- 
tion was in constant demand as an orator on 
Forefathers' Day. At the annual celebration, 
December 22, 1824, five years after the organiza- 
tion of the Society, Colonel Hunt delivered the 
principal address, which made a profound impres- 
sion at the time and which is eminently worthy 
of quotation in this sketch. He spoke as follows : 

"Upon the anniversary of events that have 
happily affected the destinies of mankind, it is 
delightful to trace the progress of the past and 
indulge in pleasing anticipations of the future. 
This day recalls to memory an occurrence that 
has already worked the most entire and the 
most important change in the civilized world, and 



Ii6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

hope itself cannot compass the prospects which 
are constantly expanding. 

"Two hundred and four years ago, a few Pil- 
grims landed on these shores and laid the founda- 
tion of our country. Few in number, poor and 
defenseless, they encountered a bleak and untamed 
wilderness. Ordinary men would have shrunk 
from the enterprise, but they were the chosen 
heralds of civil and religious liberty. Mark the 
contrast which so brief a period presents. The 
forest is subdued — the wigwam of the savage is 
supplanted by the homes of the learned, the 
pious, and the free. Science now rears her 
temples and Religion wears her brightest robes 
and scatters her choicest blessings through this 
modern Canaan. 

"It is worthy of the statesman, of the philos- 
opher, and the philanthropist to ascertain and 
illustrate the cause of a revolution so vast, so 
sudden, so admirable. In the meantime the 
other portions of the earth have experienced only 
the gradual and almost imperceptible changes 
produced by the lingering process of time. The 
nations of Europe have maintained, with little 
variety, the same relative position, while on this 
side of the Atlantic has sprung into existence, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 117 

from a little band of pious exiles, a mighty 
Republic, defying the power of the strongest and 
emulating in all the refinements of life the most 
polished; enjoying its luxuries without their 
corruptions; religion without superstition; and 
liberty without licentiousness. 

"This cannot be the effect of accident, neither 
of soil or climate, and least of all of patronage — 
for some of the most delightful and fertile regions 
have scarce advanced a step, some remained 
stationary, others have retrograded; and the his- 
tory of our infant settlements is a narrative of 
suffering fortitude struggling with the inclemen- 
cies of the seasons and the hostility of savages — 
of whole families perishing in the storms of winter, 
or butchered by the tomahawk that spared 
neither age nor sex — yet now peace crowns every 
hill and plenty smiles in every valley. 

"After a passing tribute to the stout hearts 
that quailed not at all the complicated hardships 
of the pioneers of civilization, let us look for the 
great moral cause of all our present happiness 
and all our future prospects in the purity of the 
moral and political principles of our forefathers. 

"Arrived on a part of the coast beyond the 
limits of their charter, they found themselves 



ii8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

about to disembark upon an unknown wilder- 
ness, without government, without laws, without 
magistrates. They realized the state which phi- 
losophers had only imagined, and, recurring to 
the eternal principles of all legitimate rules, they 
framed and signed a written form of government 
by which each bound himself to the whole to 
obey the majority, and proceeded to elect the 
first magistrate whoever presided over a pure 
democracy under a written charter. The nearest 
approaches of the most celebrated republics will 
not bear comparison. Here were no ancient 
customs, no prejudices, no favored family whom 
the people had been used to venerate and obey, 
no inveterate predilections, rendered sacred by 
time, to destroy the harmony of the structure 
— all were equal, all had alike forsaken the land 
of their nativity and committed themselves to 
the trackless deep to escape the oppressions of the 
Old World, and, thus remitted to their primitive 
personal independence, they formed the first 
American constitution. 

"The history of the world affords no other 
example of men yielding voluntarily to the 
restraints of government and basing it upon the 
true foundation, the sovereignty of the people. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 119 

"Although compelled for a tune to submit to 
the oppressive protection of a country that 
arrogated the name of mother, although she had 
exiled her offspring by her cruelty, they never 
lost sight of the first elements of their civil com- 
pact, and when time had matured their strength, 
and exactions repugnant to their notions of right 
afforded ample justification, these primitive repub- 
licans proclaimed an eternal separation from 
Britain and declared to the world that these states 
were, and of right ought to be, free, sovereign, 
and independent. This was the consummation of 
all the toils, all the suffering, all the moral forti- 
tude of the first settlers, and to maintain it the 
Patriots of '76 pledged to each other 'their lives, 
their fortunes, and their sacred honors,' and 
nobly did they redeem the pledge; for now our 
country stands an equal among the mightiest 
empires of the earth. Her example has shaken 
to their centers the thrones of Europe and even 
now is about to constitute all America a continent 
of free men. 

"The increase of population has been rapid 
beyond all precedent. Having secured at Plym- 
outh an asylum from the oppressions of rulers 
and the persecutions of priestcraft, new settlers 



I20 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

soon swelled their numbers. The adventurous 
and the persecuted looked to these shores, and 
new colonies studded the coast from Maine to 
Georgia; and their children now mingle in har- 
mony, constituting one great people. Here the 
Huguenots of France found protection for them- 
selves and a rich heritage for their posterity. 
Here, too, many an exile of Erin prays for the 
hour when he may write the epitaph of Emmett, 
'when his country is free.' 

"Such has been the growth of our country — 
from a few Pilgrims, wandering upon the bosom 
of the deep and cast upon an unknown shore, to 
more than ten millions of people, wdio obey no 
rulers but of their own choice and are governed 
by no laws but of their own making; whose 
religion wins by its own purity and, strong in the 
sincerity of its votaries, shackles nothing but 
guilt. But where is the prophetic eye that can 
gaze undazzled upon the bright visions of the 
future, when our eagle shall stretch his wings from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific; who can anticipate 
the exhaustless energies of civil, political, and 
religious truth? We have traced the infant 
efforts of liberty; who can foretell the glories of 
her final triumph ? 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 121 

"Yes, my friends, the unexampled and splen- 
did career of our country is to be ascribed to the 
pure doctrines and unsullied repubhcanism of our 
venerable forefathers. Her march has been the 
victory of civil and religious emancipation of the 
rights of man. This ceremony belongs not to us 
alone — the anniversary we celebrate was the 
dayspring of an enfranchised world. 

"Assembled as we are to celebrate an era so 
fertile of human happiness, although our pursuits 
in life have led us to a quarter of our common 
country far from the places of our birth and the 
scenes of our infancy, we will yet remember with 
filial fondness the green hills and pure streams of 
New England and pay the tribute of our affec- 
tions to a land rendered illustrious by the piety 
and valor of our ancestors and which now entombs 
their ashes. 

"It was our destiny to have drawn our first 
breath amid scenes which are hallowed by many 
an eventful recollection. The rocks of Plymouth, 
the plains of Lexington, and the heights of Bunker 
recall to every patriot deeds that have enriched 
us with the choicest of human blessings and 
secured to millions yet unborn their perennial 
enjoyment. 



122 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Breathes there a man with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 
This is my own, my native land! 

"Suffer me, Mr. President, to offer as a toast: 
"'The Land of the Pilgrims. Should it ever 

be polluted by the footsteps of a tyrant, may 

every height prove a Bunker, and every arm a 

Warren's.' " 

Colonel Hunt died in New York, December 6, 

1854. 

BENJAMIN FANEUIL DUNKIN 

Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin was born in Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania, December 2, 1792. His 
parents were sojourning in Philadelphia at the 
time, their permanent residence being in Massa- 
chusetts. 

At the age of eighteen young Dunkin was 
graduated with distinction from Harvard. He 
came to Charleston the following year and began 
the study of law under the direction of William 
Drayton. 

He served as an officer in the War of 181 2. 

He was admitted to the bar of South Carolina 
in 181 4. He subsequently held the following 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 123 

eminent stations in his adopted state: a member 
of the legislature, and for two terms Speaker of 
the House. 

In 1837 he was chosen chancellor in the Equity- 
Court of Appeals, and in 1865 chief justice. He 
was chief justice three years, from December, 
1865, to December, 1868. Harvard conferred on 
him the degree of LL.D., but such was his instinc- 
tive shrinking from self-glorification and the 
pomp of distinction that but few of his near 
friends were made aware of this honor. 

The following estimate of Judge Dunkin is 
from a memorial adopted by the Charleston bar 
at a meeting held December 18, 1874. 

" It is not our purpose to contemplate his per- 
sonal and private character and domestic virtues. 
These are too well garnered and treasured in the 
hearts and affections of those who are near and 
dear to him by the sacred ties of blood and the 
social relations of friendship and connection. 

" It is more in the stations of pubhc trust and 
confidence that we would contemplate him — nor 
is it so much as a lawyer as a judge that we 
would consider his qualities; for whilst he prac- 
ticed at the bar twenty-two years before he was 
a judge, he sat on the bench thirty-one; and his 



124 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

mode, plan, and course of practice and con- 
ceptions of professional ethics belonged to a day 
so long past that few present can recall or appre- 
ciate them, but all remember him as a judge. 

"It is more, too, in the character of a chan- 
cellor than even in his great office of chief justice 
that his judicial organization was manifested. 
He had essentially a mind and organism for 
equity. He entirely appreciated it, and it became, 
not irreverently to speak, almost a religion with 
him. 

"When the Bishop of Salisbury, in the reign 
of Richard II, invented the writ of stibpoena ad 
respondeum, which resulted in that procedure 
known to lawyers as the English bill, we may 
fairly infer it did not, and could not, have entered 
into the imagination of that prelate that he had 
brought into existence a judicial machine which 
would have so wonderful an influence upon 
human society. He did not surely, and could 
not, have conceived to what uses it would have 
been put under the master-hand of Sir Heneage 
Finch, Lord Nottingham, who, like D'Agesseau in 
France, has been called the father of equity in 
England; nor how, at a later day, it should in its 
consequences have been molded to such perfec- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 125 

tion as it attained under the administration of the 
great Lord Eldon. 

"It may well be said in this state that the 
venerable DeSaussure, like Nottingham in Eng- 
land, was the father of equity in South Carolina, 
and that his immediate successor, the eminent 
Dunkin, like Eldon, molded the system to the 
state of excellence at which it had arrived when it 
perished in the new order of things. 

"There seems to be in many points a strong 
resemblance between Chancellor Dunkin and 
Lord Eldon, and it is not too much to say that 
the former loses nothing by the comparison. Both 
were deliberate — Lord Eldon slow. One indulged 
in copious language and ornate style; the other 
was plain, terse, and epigrammatic — what he 
intended to say, he said, and no more; the one was 
diffuse and elaborate; the other was brief and 
pointed. Both had great experience, and the 
coincidence on this point is striking since Lord 
Eldon had the seals of the Lord Chancellor for 
twenty-four years ten months and twenty-three 
days, with a broken interval in that time for 
nearly five years; whilst Chancellor Dunkin sat 
continuously on the bench for thirty-one years 
and eighteen days. 



126 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"One very remarkable judicial characteristic 
of our subject cannot be omitted — it was his 
wonderful precision in collecting and analyzing 
the facts of the case submitted to him. It was 
this that gave him so great power and facility in 
applying the principles of law to the actual state 
of the facts, which he had ascertained with the 
utmost patience and care. 

"Hence he was not obliged to grope about in 
his judgment to wrest or distort the semblance of 
truth, to suit some favorite dogma, or theoretic 
maxim. Hence, whilst he might have said of 
himself labor o esse brevis, he could never condemn 
himself, obscurus fio. 

"Hence, too, it is a remarkable fact that even 
in the first year of his circuits none of his decrees 
were overruled and very seldom afterward. 

"The judicature in Chancery and Equity 
extended through every phase of society, to the 
rich and the poor, the lofty and the obscure. It 
pervaded all the relations of life. It began with 
the infant on his entrance into life; it followed in 
his boyhood and his youth; in his education and 
training; in his manhood, marriage, and matri- 
monial relations; then again in the cradle of his 
offspring; at the hearthstone; to the moment of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 127 

death, and, after death, in the disposition of his 
worldly estate. 

"An unostentatious piety, a pure and high 
morality, intense truthfulness, a large experience, 
profound study, great ability, and singular judg- 
ment symbolized in this great chancellor all that 
was requisite to perform these delicate, important, 
and extensive functions. 

"That eminent judge and chancellor. Job 
Johnston, in the great case of Vanlew and Parr 
used this eloquent and noble judicial language: 
'I tremble whenever I see in progress what is 
called a family arrangement; and I have struggled 
for fifteen years, with an anxiety and with a 
sincerity of effort which I feel has not been 
appreciated, to so regulate the enterprise of 
counsel and the impatience of interested parties 
as to prevent losses to widows and orphans inter- 
ested in estates, from causes to which their eager- 
ness has blinded them.' 

"Chancellor Dunkin spent his judicial life in 
carrying into effect the principle which his 
learned brother has so elegantly expressed. 

"But the scope of his far-seeing eye and 
watchful scrutiny was not limited to causes 
which affected only domestic and social rights 



128 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and interests, but included the vast sphere of 
complex contracts and engagements between 
man and man, the construction and interpreta- 
tion of contracts, deeds, wills, and other instru- 
ments, and the restraint of wrong by the great 
writ of injunction; in all of which his learning, 
his patience, his scrupulous exactness, his experi- 
ence and enlarged comprehension, enabled him 
to approximate as near as it is within human 
reason and judgment to the attainment of truth; 
and we may be well warranted in summing up 
the judicial excellence of this learned and experi- 
enced magistrate to affirm that, among the men 
who have dispensed justice from the Equity bench 
in the United States, none were his superiors, and 
not a great many his equal. 

"On his coming down from the seat of the 
chief justice at the close of the year 1868, he pre- 
sented a most remarkable spectacle. 

"Although far advanced in years at that 
time, yet he preserved the full vigor and strength 
of a healthy body and unimpaired intellect. 
Cast upon his own resources at his advanced age, 
deprived of the remuneration of his office con- 
ferred upon him on a contract for life under the 
Constitution of 1790, crippled in his estate by the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 129 

results of the war, he returned to his profession 
and, a septuagenarian, recommenced the practice 
of the laborious calling. Shorn of wealth and 
stripped of his great office at the same time, 
forced to seek a livelihood as a minister of the 
courts over all of which he had presided so long 
and with such honor and distinction, he did not 
shrink from the hard destiny, and no murmur or 
complaint ever escaped from his lips. The 
heathen valor of the youthful Scaevola endured 
the torment of slow fire in the presence of Por- 
senna; but it was more than Roman physical 
fortitude that sustained this aged modern hero. 
The teachings of a religion pure and undefiled, a 
self-control and self-abnegation based upon the 
highest moral convictions, sustained his great 
spirit amidst these scorching trials. Such was 
his love for justice, such his love of the great 
principles that lie at the base of the social fabric 
of organized society, that, although the ermine 
had fallen from his shoulders and he could no 
longer officiate as chief priest at the altar of the 
tribunal of justice, he bent himself in humility in 
his old age and yielded to be a censer-bearer on 
the outside of the chancel. 



I30 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"One of the first acts of his new and renewed 
professional obHgations was to argue a summary 
process, and after the present Supreme Court was 
organized he was one of the first of his brethren 
of the bar to present an argument before that 
body. 

" For near six years he industriously and faith- 
fully labored again at his profession, and in the 
midst of the renewed trials belonging to a long 
past youth he was called away to his rest, ' eternal 
in the heavens.' 

"Chief Justice Dunkin was married to Miss 
Washington S. Prentiss on January i8, 1820, and 
when only two days remained to complete a half- 
century of connubial affection and mutual respect 
and esteem, death with galling hand added 
affiiction to his trials and snatched her from his 
breast, and left him to travel the weary remnant 
of life's journey without the companion of his 
youth and manhood, who had cheered him with 
hope on the rugged way and shared his joys in 
the hour of success and prosperity. 

"It is becoming in the bar of Charleston, of 
whom Chief Justice Dunkin was a representative, 
to record their estimation of his long, able, and 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 131 

faithful discharge of judicial duty in the exalted 
stations in which he had been placed by the con- 
fidence of the people of the state, and to hold him 
up as an example for the study and imitation of 
all those who may succeed us in our honorable 
and responsible profession. Be it therefore 

^^ Resolved, That in the death of the late able 
and distinguished Chief Justice Benjamin Faneuil 
Dunkin the jurisprudence of the country has lost 
an eminent advocate and supporter and the bar 
of Charleston one of its most conspicuous and 
valuable representatives. 

^^ Resolved, That while we deplore this great 
public loss, we bow with reverence to the decree 
of the Almighty Judge that summoned this faith- 
ful minister of justice from the transitory courts 
of time to the Eternal Courts, in which there is 
neither error nor change. 

^^ Resolved, That the chairman of this meeting 
be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing 
memoir and these resolutions to the family of the 
deceased, and to express the condolence of the 
bar on this solemn occasion." 

At the annual meeting of the New England 
Society, December, 1874, Hon. James B. Campbell, 



132 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

president of the Society, paid the following tribute 
to the memory of Judge Dunkin : 

"Fifty-five years ago, about fifty natives of 
New England resident here founded this Society 
for the purpose, as they declared, of keeping alive 
in their minds the memory of the land of their 
birth, and the institutions of their fathers, and for 
even a higher object, ' to organize an efiicient sys- 
tem of charity to such sons of New England as 
might in Charleston be arrested by disease or fall 
into poverty.' 

"The survivor of all that little 'band of kind 
hearts and noble spirits,' after a long and honored 
life, has gone to his rest. 

"There is now on the roll of our Society no 
living link between that day and this day — 
between that Past and this Present. 

"He had wisdom more than genius — acquire- 
ments rather than gifts — -he added to these sys- 
tematic labor and care. They made him beyond 
a doubt a wise and learned judge. 

"The features of his character, like those of 
his person, were solid, substantial, and permanent. 
In what he did he aspired more to durability 
than ornament. His manners in the perform- 
ance of public duty were grave and formal, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 133 

something rising to stateliness, if not austerity. 
These when carried into social life were softened 
and mingled with a genial politeness and kindli- 
ness never neglected. 

"As a man, his life was without reproach. He 
had the great merit of fidelity and tenacity in his 
friendships. They were not exhausted by agree- 
able companionship in prosperity nor by kind 
words of comfort in adversity. He vindicated 
them, when the time of trial came, by liberal 
and effectual succor. It is very high praise to 
say this because it is the evidence of other 
great traits of character, of which this is the 
germ. 

"He was brave and constant, and this tem- 
pered him for adversity, so that when the catas- 
trophe of unsuccessful revolution deprived him 
of fortune and of station neither his fortitude nor 
his self-control forsook him. Therefore it was 
that the way he bore himself in old age under the 
pressure of labor, of broken fortunes, and of hopes 
disappointed, was the great triumph, the crown- 
ing beauty of his long and laborious life; a life 
and career honorable to himself and reflecting 
honor as well upon the region of his birth as of 
his labors and of his home, the memory of which, 



134 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

faithfully transmitted to his posterity, will be the 
foundation of a just and rational pride." 

Majorum gloria posteris lumen est neque 
bona neque mala in occulto patitur. 

Judge Dunkin died December 5, 1874, at the 
age of eighty-two, loved and mourned by all who 
knew him. 

BENJAMIN J. ROWLAND 

Benjamin J. Rowland was born in South 
Boston, Massachusetts, November, 1794. Mr. 
Rowland traced his ancestry direct to those who 
were among the earliest to land from the Old 
World upon the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and 
ever retained a deep interest in everything con- 
nected with the history of the landing of the 
Pilgrims. 

He came to Charleston in 181 5 and was 
engaged in the mercantile business for more than 
forty years. As a merchant he won the entire 
confidence of the commercial community and of 
his fellow-citizens by his active usefulness, strict 
integrity, and high sense of honor. 

Re became a member of the New England 
Society of Charleston in 1828 and so continued 
until his death, taking a lively interest during a 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 135 

membership of near half a century in everything 
connected with its prosperity, both as a social 
and as a charitable organization. He was for a 
number of years one of its vice-presidents. 

In everything calculated to advance the pros- 
perity of Charleston Mr. Howland always took a 
ready and active working part. He was among 
those sagacious and far-seeing merchants who at 
an early period, struggling against disheartening 
difficulties, succeeded in connecting Charleston 
with Augusta by the South Carolina Railroad, 
one of the earliest and for many years the longest 
railroad in the United States. He served in the 
directorate of that road for several years. 

As a member of the board of firemasters he 
was also an energetic worker for many years, in 
which position his sound judgment and calmness 
in time of danger gave great value to his services. 

Serving as a member of the Common Council 
of Charleston, he was greatly esteemed by those 
with whom he was associated, invariably giving 
entire satisfaction to his fellow-citizens generally. 

The leading prominent feature in the character 
of Mr. Howland seemed to have been his open- 
hearted, active, practical benevolence. The great 
aim of his life was to advance the welfare and 



136 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

happiness of his fellow-men. In the promotion of 
this object his zeal and labors were unceasing. 

An old and wonderfully prosperous savings 
institution of this city owed its existence to him, 
and its years of great success and usefulness were 
due to his active zeal, aided by those whom he 
enlisted in that work. Its subsequent destruction 
was among the great calamities of the war which 
fell upon Charleston. Its leading benevolent 
feature at one time was its investments in real 
estate securities, which, if adhered to, might have 
saved it from ruin. 

The good deeds of Mr. Rowland were not con- 
fined to those which came under the public eye. 
He was vigilant in looking for those who needed 
assistance, always ready to render it by word or 
act, without ostentation and without seeking 
applause. 

These charitable traits of character and habits 
of benevolence did not change with his change of 
home, and we find him during the latter years of 
his life, while a resident of New York, actively 
and energetically engaged as a member of the 
Children's Aid Society, an institution dedicated 
to the aid and reform of destitute children in that 
city, and accomplishing great good. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 137 

Mr. Rowland died in New York City, Decem- 
ber 10, 1874, having attained the ripe old age of 
more than fourscore years. 



JOHN EDWARDS HOLBROOK 

John Edwards Holbrook was born in Beaufort, 
South Carolina, December 30, 1794. He died in 
Norfolk, Massachusetts, September 8, 1871. His 
early life was spent in Wrentham, Massachusetts, 
the original home of his father's family. He was 
graduated from Brown University in 181 5 and 
from the medical department at the University of 
Pennsylvania in 1818. He continued his profes- 
sional studies for four years in London, Edinburgh, 
and Paris. He married Miss Harriott Pinckney 
Rutledge in 1827. Dr. Holbrook began the 
practice of medicine in Charleston in 1822. The 
same year he became a member of the New Eng- 
land Society. Two years later he was elected pro- 
fessor of anatomy in the South Carolina Medical 
College, where he taught for more than thirty 
years. His lectures on comparative anatomy 
attracted wide attention. Dr. Holbrook's greatest 
achievement was his American Herpetology, or a 
Description of Reptiles Inhabiting the United 



138 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

States. This work gave him not only a national 
but a world-wide reputation as a leader in scientific 
thought. For a time Dr. Holbrook was more 
famous as an original thinker in Europe than in 
America. 

In an appreciation prepared by Dr. T. L. 
Ogier and pubHshed in 1871, the following state- 
ment is of interest: 

"Dr. Holbrook completed his work on herpetol- 
ogy, on which he had long been engaged, in 1842; 
but before its completion his reputation as a pro- 
ficient in this branch of natural history had been 
made by the correct descriptions and accurate 
and elegant representations of the animals con- 
tained in the first numbers of the work. 

"He visited Europe about this time and was 
received in the Jardin des Plantes with open arms 
by Valenciennes and other naturalists whom he 
had known before his attention was turned to 
this special branch of natural history. In the vast 
collection of reptiles in the museum of this garden 
he found several different animals grouped under 
one division and some described as different 
varieties which were only the young of a class 
before described. He pointed out these mistakes 
and made them evident to those in charge of the 




OTIS MILLS 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 139 

museum, who were the chief naturaHsts of Paris, 
and was invited by them to overhaul the ani* 
mals and put his own labels on them, which he 
did; and he has often spoken of this as one of 
the greatest compliments paid to his knowledge 
of reptiles. It was indeed a high appreciation 
of his merit as a naturalist. 

"Dr. Holbrook's work on herpetology, which 
is one of the most correct, as well as beautiful, 
ever written, was undertaken under great diffi- 
culties, and only a true lover of science could have 
surmounted them. In his Preface he says: 'In 
undertaking the present work, I was not fully 
aware of the many difficulties attending it. With 
an immense mass of materials, without libraries to 
refer to, and only defective museums for compari- 
son, I have been constantly in fear of describing 
as new, animals that have long been known to 
European naturalists.' Yet, with all these diffi- 
culties, the Doctor succeeded in completing his 
work, which is now considered authoritative in 
herpetology. 

"After the publication of his Herpetology, 
Dr. Holbrook commenced a work of the ichthy- 
ology of the Southern states. This was a laborious 
undertaking, obliging him to go to distant parts of 



I40 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the country wherever the fishes were to be found, 
or else to have them drawn from preserved speci- 
mens in which the colors and, in fact, the charac- 
ter, of the animal is often lost. The labor of 
traveling in the Southern states, up the rivers and 
swamps, was too great; and 'his love of truth 
requiring that all his plates should represent living 
animals,' and not those shriveled and altered by 
alcohol and other preserving fluids, he altered the 
plan of his work, and confined his studies to the 
Fishes of South Carolina. Of this work, two 
numbers with most accurate and beautiful plates 
of some of our fishes were published, showing 
what a splendid work it would have been had he 
been allowed to complete it; but a fire occurring in 
Philadelphia, where the work was being published, 
destroyed most of the plates and much of the 
material of the work. This misfortune, being 
followed by the late war which necessarily inter- 
fered with his studies, put an end to his labors in 
this beautiful branch of natural history, to which 
his work would have been an elegant contribu- 
tion." 

Through his Herpetology Dr. Holbrook became 
acquainted with Louis Agassiz, the greatest 
naturalist of his time. The acquaintance grew 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 141 

into a deep friendship, Dr. Holbrook spending a 
part of each summer at the home of Dr. Agassiz 
in New England. After the death of Dr. Hol- 
brook, Louis Agassiz, speaking before the Natural 
History Society of Boston, paid the following 
tribute to his dear friend and colleague : 

"Highly as he was appreciated by all to whom 
he was personally known and by his scientific 
peers and colleagues, America does not know 
what she has lost in him nor what she owed to 
him. A man of singularly modest nature, eluding 
rather than courting notice, he nevertheless first 
compelled European recognition of American 
Science by the accuracy and originality of his 
investigations. I well remember the impression 
made in Europe more than five and thirty years 
ago by his work on the North American reptiles. 
Before then, the supercilious English question, so 
effectually answered since, 'Who reads an American 
book ?' might have been repeated in another form, 
'Who ever saw an American scientific work?' 
But Holbrook's elaborate history of American 
herpetology was far above any previous work on 
the same subject. In that branch of investiga- 
tion Europe had at that time nothing which could 
compare with it." 



142 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Dr. Holbrook was a member of the American 
Philosophical Society and of the National Acad- 
emy of Sciences. During the Civil War, he was 
the chairman of the Examining Board of Surgeons 
of South Carolina. 



HENRY WORKMAN CONNER 

Henry Workman Conner was born near 
Beattie's Ford, Mecklenburg County, North 
Carolina, March 4, 1 797. He was of Irish descent, 
his ancestors having come to America from 
Antrim, Ireland. His eldest son, General James 
Conner, merited fame as a Confederate leader in 
the Civil War and was one of the representative 
men of South Carolina in the years that followed. 
The subject of this sketch came to Charleston 
early in life, entered the mercantile business, and 
gradually by reason of energy, ambition, ability, 
and sterling integrity became one of the leading 
financiers in the South. 

In 1835 he was a factor in the organization of 
the Bank of Charleston, an original director, and 
in 1 84 1 became its president. This bank became 
nationally prominent, and is today the leading 
financial institution of South Carolina. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 143 

After the great fire of 1837, it was largely- 
through the influence and faith of Mr. Conner 
that the Charleston Hotel and other buildings in 
its immediate vicinity were rebuilt. Mr. Conner 
was assisted in this momentous task by Lorenzo 
Tucker Potter, a New Englander and a member 
of the New England Society. 

In 1850 Mr. Conner was elected president of 
the South Carolina Railroad. In 1853 he went 
to New Orleans, where he spent five years. 

He was president of the Hibernian Society of 
Charleston for a number of years, and, it may be 
said, its most distinguished president. He was 
also active and liberal in all of the charitable 
organizations of the city. 

He joined the New England Society in 1828 
and was prominent in its deliberations for a 
generation. 

He died January 11, 1861, loved and mourned 
by the entire city. 

The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin said of 
him at the time of his death: 

"The two communities of Charleston and New 
Orleans have to regret the loss of a member 
important to both. A half a century passed in 
active business placed him at the head of every 



144 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

movement, mercantile and financial, which has 
been inaugurated in the former place; whilst in 
the latter a short residence of some five years was 
rapidly leading him to the same enviable pre- 
eminence. Gifted with the strongest traits of 
character, he was felt wherever he appeared and 
he left his impress for good upon everything he 
touched. Self-taught and self-sustained, he ever 
stood the man among the men of the occasion. A 
powerful mind governed a strong will and a genial 
heart directed both to the good of all around him. 
Energy of thought and energy of action were 
directed by practical sense — ^hence success followed 
every effort, and public institutions and private 
individuals alike have reason to bless the healthful 
exercise of his influence. In early life we find him 
a merchant, and his fitness for that vocation is 
evidenced by the success which followed him 
through the severest trials. Test him as a prac- 
tical man and his energy finds a glorious illustra- 
tion in the results of the railroad system, not of 
South Carolina alone, but to some extent of 
Georgia also. As a financier he shows a brilliant 
record whilst wielding the three millions of the 
Bank of Charleston, rendering that institution a 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 145 

substitute for the old bank of the United States 
as the fiscal agent of the South, both at home and 
abroad. As a private banker he leaves a proud 
name, not in America alone, but through all 
Christendom — a. name accredited where commerce 
carries a flag or sends an adventurer. To have 
done this was to have lived to some purpose; but 
he did more. As a patriot he lived long enough 
to subscribe his name to the Ordinance of Seces- 
sion of the state of South Carolina; this has made 
his name historic. And might he not have said 
as the prophet of old: 'Now lettest Thy servant 
depart in peace.' As a friend, we dare not per- 
mit ourselves to speak of him lest truth might 
assume the appearance of exaggeration, but we 
may indulge in the luxury of hoarding the remem- 
brance of his acts of kindness as treasures to be 
garnered in our hearts. 

"There is one body of men who will have a 
special tear to shed for him. Those who remem- 
ber him as the presiding officer of the Hibernian 
Society of Carolina will feel their hearts swell 
when they call to mind the genial glow which 
suffused itseh over their meetings when he led 
them to deeds of charity or in the mirth of the 
hour. 



146 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"And thus in all, either as a man of measures 
or as a friend indeed, he was what few are and 
what all should wish to be." 



WILLIAM COOMBS DANA 

William Coombs Dana was of Huguenot 
ancestry. He was descended from Richard Dana, 
who fled from persecution in France and settled 
temporarily in England, from which country he 
emigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, about 
1640, where he died April 2, 1690. He was the 
ancestor of a long line of men who have illus- 
trated the history of New England in all the 
learned professions, in literary life, and in high 
public station. The Reverend Dr. Daniel Dana, 
the father of the subject of the present sketch, 
was for fifty years one of the most prominent and 
influential clergymen of New England, and for 
part of that time president of Dartmouth CoUege. 
His son, William C. Dana, whose name has been 
so long and prominently associated with the 
history of Charleston, came to this city in 1835, 
preaching in the church in which his life was spent 
for the first time in December of that year, and 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 147 

being ordained to the ministry and installed as 
pastor, February, 1836. His preparation for the 
holy office had enjoyed the privilege alike of 
Andover, Princeton, and Columbia Theological 
seminaries, and he was a workman fully finished 
for his work. 

To a literary taste that was exquisitely delicate 
he added a passionate fondness for all that was 
good and a wide familiarity with all that was best 
in literature. He was an accurate and elegant 
classical scholar and a polished and luminous 
writer. In 1831 he published a translation of 
Fenelon. In 1845 ^^ issued a volume containing 
an account of his travels in Europe during the pre- 
ceding year, entitled Transatlantic Tour; in 1866 
he published The Life of the Reverend Dr. Daniel 
Dana, his father. He paid especial attention to 
the hymnology and compiled a volume of hymns. 
He was also the author of several very choice 
poetical effusions which were received with much 
favor by the literary public, and yet his devotion 
to general letters did not demand in sacrifice 
either the Hterature or the labor of his chosen and 
sacred caUing. Upon all questions of theology he 
was deeply read, and in all the trying, practical 



148 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

duties of his work he was diligent and inde- 
fatigable. 

His ministry of nearly half a century to a single 
congregation, the Central Presbyterian Church, 
one of the most cultured and intellectual that 
Charleston could boast, and at a time when 
Charleston was a center of literary and intellectual 
excellence as it had scarcely ever been before, and 
the loving devotion of the entire city, speak 
eloquently of the high esteem in which he was 
held. 

He became a member of the New England 
Society in 1843 3,nd acted as its chaplain on a 
number of important occasions. 

CHARLES UPHAM SHEPARD 

Charles Upham Shepard was born at Little 
Compton, Rhode Island, June 29, 1804. He was 
graduated from Amherst College in 1824. The 
following year he specialized in botany and 
mineralogy under the direction of Professor 
Thomas Nuttall at Harvard. 

Mr. Shepard's papers on mineralogy published 
in the American Journal of Science attracted the 
attention of Professor Benjamin Silliman, of Yale, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 149 

He was invited in 1827 to become Professor 
Silliman's assistant and continued so until 1831. 
Meanwhile for a year he was curator of Franklin 
Hall, an institution that was established by James 
Brewster in New Haven for popular lectures on 
scientific subjects to mechanics. In 1830 he was 
appointed lecturer on natural history at Yale and 
held that place until 1847. He was associated 
with Professor Silliman in the scientific examina- 
tion of the culture and manufacture of sugar 
that was undertaken by the latter at the special 
request of the Secretary of the Treasury; and 
the Southern states, particularly Louisiana and 
Georgia, were assigned to him to report upon. 
From 1834 till 1861 he filled the chair of chemis- 
try in the Medical College of the state of South 
Carolina, which he relinquished at the beginning 
of the Civil War, but in 1865, at the urgent invi- 
tation of his former colleagues, he resumed his 
duties for a few years. While in Charleston he 
discovered rich deposits of phosphate of lime in 
the immediate vicinity of this city. Their great 
value in agriculture and subsequent use in the 
manufacture of superphosphate fertilizers proved 
an important addition to the chemical industries 
of South Carolina. 



I50 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

He became a member of the New England 
Society in 1843 ^^^ delivered a number of scholarly 
addresses at its annual dinners on Forefathers' 
Day. 

In 1845 he was chosen professor of chemistry 
and natural history in Amherst, which chair was 
divided in 1852, and he continued to deliver the 
lectures on natural history until 1877, when he 
was made professor emeritus. He was associated 
in 1835 with Dr. James G. Percival in the geologi- 
cal survey of Connecticut, and throughout his life 
he was actively engaged in the study of mineral- 
ogy. He announced in 1835 ^^^ discovery of his 
first new species of microlite, that of warwickite 
in 1838, that of danburite in 1839, and he after- 
ward described many new minerals until shortly 
before his death. Professor Shepard acquired a 
large collection of minerals, which at one time 
was unsurpassed in this country, and which in 
1877 was purchased by Amherst College but 
three years later was partially destroyed by fire. 
Early in life he began the study and collection of 
meteorites, and his cabinet, long the largest in the 
country, likewise became the property of Amherst. 
His papers on this subject from 1829 till 1882 
were nearly forty in number and appeared chiefly 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 151 

in the American Journal of Science. The honorary 
degree of M.D. was conferred on him by Dart- 
mouth in 1836, and that of LL.D. by Amherst in 
1857. Professor Shepard was a member of many 
American and foreign societies, including the 
Imperial Society of Natural Science in St. Peters- 
burg, the Royal Society of Gottingen, and the 
societies of natural sciences in Vienna. 

In addition to his many papers, he published 
a Treatise on Mineralogy, a Report on the Geological 
Survey of Connecticut, and numerous reports on 
mines in the United States. 

Professor Shepard died in Charleston, May i, 
1886. He was one of the great scientists of his 
day. 

CHARLES ROYAL BREWSTER 

Charles Royal Brewster was born at Burton, 
York County, Maine, July 23, 1808. He died in 
Charleston, South Carolina, July 16, 1885. 

Mr. Brewster was graduated with honors from 
Bowdoin College in 1828. He studied law in 
Boston, Massachusetts. He came to Charleston, 
where he spent the remainder of his life, in 1831. 
After teaching school for two years, he was 
admitted to the bar of South Carolina and 



152 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

immediately entered into copartnership with 
Hon. B. F. Dunkin, afterward chief justice of 
the Supreme Court of the state. 

Upon the accession of the latter to the bench 
as chancellor, Mr. Brewster formed a connection 
with Hon. Henry Bailey, then attorney-general, 
which continued ten years. After that he formed 
at different times various business engagements 
with A. H. Dunkin, then with Hon. Robert 
Munro, and since the war with Colonel L. W. 
Spratt and Mr. J. E. Burke. 

An editorial published in the News and Courier 
July 17, 1885, gives the following estimate of 
Mr. Brewster's character: 

"Mr. Brewster's life presented no glaring 
contrasts or striking changes, no remarkable vi- 
cissitudes, no peculiar elevations or unusual de- 
pressions. He kept the even tenor of his way, 
pursuing the path of duty as it appeared to him, 
as with a kind heart, tender conscience, and clear 
intellect he sought to understand his obligations 
in all the relations of life, and, understanding, 
to discharge them completely. Like a calm and 
peaceful river running its passage to the sea, his life 
flowed along until it mingled with the ocean of eter- 
nity, not without dispensing blessings in its course. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 153 

"As a lawyer he added to the clear and sound 
judgment of a mind well stocked with legal knowl- 
edge untiring industry in the preparation of his 
cases and devotion to the interests of his clients. 
Toward his brethren of the profession he con- 
stantly exhibited that urbanity of manner which 
was but the index of his kindly feelings which 
actuated him in his dealings with them; and 
while advocating with his utmost power the 
rights committed to his care, he never forgot 
what was just and courteous to his adversaries. 

"As he was regular in habit and even in dis- 
position, so the character of Mr. Brewster was 
well rounded in every respect. As a moral and 
religious man he endeavored to fulfil the duties 
he owed to his God; as a husband and the head 
of a family he did all that in him lay to promote 
the welfare and happiness of the household; as a 
citizen he was alive to all that concerned the 
common good of state, city, and county, and 
cheerfully gave his support to all measures tend- 
ing to the public benefit. As a professional man 
he was able, high toned, devoted, courteous, and 
just. 

"In the latter part of his life, especially, his 
mild and genial nature impressed many with 



154 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

whom he was daily brought in contact, for to the 
last he was busy among men. Many who are but 
acquaintances will remember with kindness the 
good old man with youthful spirits and never a 
bitter word to wound his fellow-man, while those 
to whom he was nearer and dearer throughout 
their lives will treasure his memory with grateful 
and affectionate regard." 

STEPHEN AUGUSTUS HURLBUT 

Stephen Augustus Hurlbut was born in 
Charleston, South Carolina, November 29, 181 5. 
He was of New England stock. 

Mr. Hurlbut studied law and was admitted to 
the bar of South Carolina in 1837. Three years 
later he became a member of the New England 
Society. When the "Florida War" broke out, 
he gave up his law practice temporarily and 
entered the service as adjutant of a South Carolina 
regiment. 

In 1845 ^^ went to Illinois and practiced his 
profession in Belvidere. He was a presidential 
elector on the Whig ticket in 1848, was a member 
of the legislature in 1859, 1861, and 1867, and 
presidential elector at large on the Republican 
ticket in 1869. At the beginning of the Civil War, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 155 

he was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers 
and commanded at Fort Donelson after its capture 
in February, 1862. When General Grant's army 
moved up the Tennessee River, Hurlbut com- 
manded the Fourth Division, and was the first to 
reach Pittsburg Landing, which he held for a 
week alone. He was promoted to the rank of 
major general for meritorious conduct at the 
Battle of Shiloh, was then stationed at Memphis, 
and after the Battle of Corinth, in October, 1862, 
pursued and engaged the defeated Confederates. 
He commanded at Memphis in September, 1863, 
led a corps under Sherman in the expedition 
to Meridian in February, 1864, and succeeded 
General Nathaniel P. Banks in command of the 
Department of the Gulf, serving there from 1864 
till 1865, when he was honorably mustered out. 

Mr. Hurlbut was appointed commander-in- 
chief of the Grand Army of the Republic at the 
first annual encampment in 1866. 

He was Minister of the United States to 
Colombia from 1869 till 1872, and was then 
elected a representative to Congress from Illinois 
as a Republican for two consecutive terms, 
serving from 1873 till 1877. In 1881 he was 
appointed Minister to Peru, which office he 



156 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

retained until his death, which occurred in Lima, 
Peru, March 27, 1882. 

ALVA GAGE 

Alva Gage was born in New London, New 
Hampshire, March 14, 1820. As a young man, 
he engaged in business in Charlestown, Massa- 
chusetts. In 1853 he came to Charleston, with 
whose practical enterprise and public institutions 
he was prominently identified until his decease — 
serving as alderman, market and orphan house 
commissioner, director of the People's National 
Bank and the Lockhart Mills; first vice-president 
of the Associated Charities Society, of which he 
was one of the founders and to which he gave 
five thousand dollars, in addition to the donation 
of constant funds to meet emergent cases; second 
vice-president of the William Enston Home, "to 
make old age comfortable"; second vice-president 
of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, and a prominent member and munificent 
benefactor of the church of his own and ancestral 
faith. The Alva Gage Hall, the parish house of 
the Unitarian Church of Charleston, is a memorial 
to Mr. Gage. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 157 

He became a member of the New England 
Society in 1855, two years after his arrival in 
Charleston, and at the time of his death, Septem- 
ber 12, 1896, was the oldest in membership on 
the roll of the Society. 

The New England Society paid the following 
tribute to Mr. Gage at a meeting held immediately 
after his death: 

" 'Let him to whom I have done violence or 
injustice now appear, and I am ready to make 
reparation.' So said a dying leader of men who 
passed from earth many centuries ago. And so 
with far, far more truth could he have said, our 
brother, who looked his last upon earth and air 
and sea and sky since we last gathered in the 
intercourse, so dear to him, of this Society, and 
whose absence leaves a void which we dare not 
hope to fill. 

"If ever a man singularly equipped by nature 
and training for the active pursuits of life and 
incessantly occupied with them kept his heart 
more tender, his hand more responsive to it, and 
his conscience more clear of intentional wrong 
than Alva Gage, it has scarcely been our lot to 
know him. For forty-three years his life was 



158 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

lived here, amid a people differing from his own 
in race and tradition and largely of differing 
religious convictions; a people proud of their 
own birthright of noble ancestry and fixed in 
steadfastness to their own modes of life and 
habits of thought, which were other than those 
in which he had been nurtured. That, in a 
community such as this was when he came to 
it, the young New Englander earned a place of 
respect, confidence, honor, and love, which in- 
creased with increasing years — and through all 
the changes wrought by a war which uprooted 
the very foundations of its social fabric increased 
without the sacrifice of a single conscientious 
conviction, until the whole community mourned 
his loss as that of a model citizen and public 
benefactor! That this could be, and was, is a 
tribute to our brother compared to which all 
others are meaningless. If the end came sud- 
denly to this blameless and bountiful life, that life 
could afford that thus it should be. He does not 
die silent whose helpfulness to others is inspired 
by his own hands, folded though they be in their 
last sleep. 

"As a public tribute to our lamented brother, 
be it 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 159 

^^ Resolved, That this memorial of Alva Gage, 
the philanthropist and friend of every good cause, 
the eminent citizen and stainless man, our brother 
beloved, be spread upon the record book of the 
New England Society, and that a page of that 
record book be consecrated to his memory. 

^^ Resolved, That a copy of this memorial, 
suitably engrossed and signed by the president 
and secretary, be furnished to the widow of our 
departed fellow-member." 

GEORGE WALTON WILLIAMS 

George Walton Williams was born in Burke 
County, North Carolina, December 19, 1820. 
His ancestors emigrated to America from Wales 
on account of religious persecution. In 1799 
Edward WiUiams, of Easton, Massachusetts, 
came to Charleston and located for a time, later 
going to western North Carolina, where he 
became a successful farmer and merchant. Dur- 
ing his sojourn in North Carolina, Edward 
WiUiams married Mary Brown. Eight children 
were born to this union, George Walton being the 
fourth and youngest son. At the age of three, 
young George Walton was taken by his parents 



i6o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

to Nacoochee, Georgia. In this beautiful valley 
his childhood and early youth were spent. 

While in his teens young Williams went to 
Augusta, Georgia, and began his business career 
as a clerk in a wholesale grocery establishment. 
In a few years he became a partner in the business 
and at the age of twenty-three a director in the 
State Bank of Georgia. Mr. Williams came to 
Charleston in 1852 and established the whole- 
sale grocery house of George W. Williams and 
Company. Four years later he became a mem- 
ber of the New England Society and subsequently 
vice-president. 

When the Civil War began in i860, Mr. 
Williams was the head of two great mercantile 
establishments, a director of two railroads, a 
director of the Bank of South Carolina, and the 
financial counselor of the city of Charleston and 
of a large number of friends. 

Five of Mr. Williams' partners were in the 
Confederate Army and all of his clerks in service. 
Food of every description became scarce and 
prices became higher from day to day. In this 
condition Mr. Williams no longer had a heart for 
trade. As Mr. Williams was an alderman of the 
city of Charleston and chairman of the committee 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA i6i 

on ways and means, Mayor Macbeth needed his 
services in Charleston to aid in managing the 
finances. 

The state legislature had appointed Mr. 
Williams commissary to procure provisions for 
the soldiers' families, and he was appointed by 
the city council of Charleston manager of the 
subsistence stores to procure supplies for the 
poor of Charleston. Mr. Williams, having cor- 
respondents in all of the Southern states, at once 
adopted measures to procure the needed supplies, 
which were issued under his personal supervision 
without his charging one cent for his services or 
for rent on the buildings which were occupied. 

Mr. Williams with his usual skill, promptness, 
and energy threw himself into this labor of use- 
fulness, and through his exertions thousands of 
the destitute and suffering were supplied with 
food daily to the end of the war. The friends of 
Mr. Williams regarded this beneficent enterprise 
and labor as the crowning achievement of his 
life. 

The gigantic undertaking under the most try- 
ing circumstances, shut out by land and sea, with 
its endless details of duty, its cares, trials, diffi- 
culties, and responsibilities, was of an exhausting 



1 62 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

character and proved almost beyond his power 
of mental and physical endurance. Nevertheless 
he held his ground and stood steadfast at his post 
to the last. 

The very day that the city fell, he issued 
rations to some ten thousand people, all grades 
and colors, from his private residence, located 
near Hampstead in the northeastern part of the 
city; he had removed from George Street in 
consequence of the bombardment. 

So great was the pressure the day of the evacu- 
ation that it was necessary to barricade the 
doors of the dwelling and distribute the provisions 
through the windows, for everything in Charleston 
was in the wildest state of confusion. At one 
moment when the crush was greatest, a terrible 
explosion took place at the Northeastern Depot, 
by which, it was said, several hundred persons had 
lost their lives, and it was believed that the 
immense powder magazine in the Half Moon 
Battery near his dwelling had been blown up. 
The panic occasioned by this dreadful catastrophe 
beggars all description. 

It will be seen from these details that Mr. 
Williams was in Charleston when the city was 
evacuated by the Confederate forces. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 163 

Through his appeal to the retiring Confederate 
general the day before the surrender, he obtained 
an order written by R. G. Gilchrist, the general's 
private secretary, for all remaining supplies and 
stores of the Confederate government. These 
were destined to the flames, but were thus saved 
by his prompt action. 

The fires caused by the burning of cotton, by 
gunboats, and in part by incendiaries were then 
raging fiercely and threatened to lay the city in 
ashes. In this crisis Mr. Williams called on the 
Mayor to urge upon him the necessity of sur- 
rendering the city, especially as the fire depart- 
ment was disorganized in consequence of its 
members being arrested by the small squads of 
Confederate soldiers who had been left in Charles- 
ton for that purpose. 

Mayor Macbeth appointed Alderman W. H. 
Gilliland and George W. Williams to be the 
bearers to Morris Island of the following com- 
munication: 

To the General Commanding the Army of the United States, 

at Morris Island 
Sir: 

The military authorities of the Confederate states 
have evacuated this city. I have remained to enforce 



1 64 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

law and preserve order until you take such steps as you 
may think best. 

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

Charles Macbeth, Mayor 

In the meantime Mr. Williams, learning that 
the United States troops under Colonel A. G. 
Bennett were landing on Atlantic Wharf, in the 
rear of the old Exchange, proceeded to that 
place and had an interview with Colonel Bennett. 
Mr. Wilhams informed him of the disorganized 
condition of things in Charleston and asked for 
assistance to aid in extinguishing the fires. The 
assistance was furnished by Colonel Bennett. 

After the interview, the subjoined reply was 
sent to the Mayor's note: 

Headquarters, United States Forces 
Charleston Harbor 
N. Atlantic Wharf, February i8, 1865 
Mayor Charles Macbeth: 

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your 
communication of this date. I have, in reply thereto, to 
state that the troops under my command will render 
every possible assistance to your well-disposed citizens in 
extinguishing the fires now burning. I have the honor to 
be, Mayor, very respectfully your obedient servant, 

A. G. Bennett 
Lieutenant Colonel Commanding United States Forces, 
Charleston 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 165 

The navy took possession of Fort Moultrie 
and Castle Pinckney, and a volunteer party of 
ten men from Morris Island planted the United 
States flag on Sumter. The soldiers took pos- 
session of the citadel and arsenal. Mr. Williams 
procured from the Federal military authorities a 
guard to protect the several mills and ware- 
houses in which the provisions had been stored 
and thus saved from the devouring flames food 
enough to sustain twenty thousand people for 
three months, which he issued to the citizens after 
the fall of Charleston when they had neither 
money nor the means of procuring support. 
Many were thus rescued from great want and 
suffering. 

When the war was over, Mr, Williams went to 
Washington, D.C., and procured a charter for 
the First National Bank of Charleston, with a 
capital of $500,000, intending to be its president; 
but on account of the importunity of many 
friends he gave up his original plan and returned 
to his wholesale business, which was the first 
commercial establishment to open its doors after 
the Civil War. 

Mr. Williams later opened a banking house 
and in 1874 organized the Carolina Savings Bank 



1 66 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and became its first president. This bank, one of 
the great savings banks of the South, is now 
owned and managed by his sons. 

An outstanding fact in the wonderful financial 
career of Mr. Williams is that when he started 
out for himself in Augusta, Georgia, his only- 
possession, materially speaking, was ten dollars. 
A number of years before his death he made a 
careful estimate of his financial ventures and 
found that he had distributed in earnings to his 
partners and others more than twenty-five million 
dollars. 

Mr. Williams was twice married; first to 
Louisa A. Wightman, in 1843, sister of Bishop 
William M. Wightman, a lady of deep piety, 
possessing many of the characteristics of her 
brother and of her sainted mother. His second 
wife was Martha F. Porter, a daughter of John 
W. Porter, of Madison, Georgia, a lady of rare 
qualities of heart, mind, and person. This 
marriage took place in November, 1856. 

Mr. Williams died January 6, 1903. The 
News and Courier of Charleston paid him the 
following tribute: 

"Mr. Williams was endowed with strong will 
power, great tenacity of purpose, was quick in 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 167 

perception, fertile in resources, active and ener- 
getic, with a tough, wiry, rather than robust, 
frame, and enjoyed uniformly excellent health. 
His life has been one of devoted industry and 
earnestly practical results. In his business trans- 
actions he did not waste time or words, but acted 
as it were by intuition, rarely stopping to reason 
but reaching his conclusions by his first impulse. 
'Instinct,' he said, 'is honest, while reason is 
subject to a thousand influences and is often 
unreliable.' 

"Mr. Williams allowed himself few seasons of 
repose or recreation, but found time to visit 
Cuba, Canada, various portions of the United 
States, and made the tour of Europe twice. An 
example of the wonderful versatility of Mr. 
Williams is found in his literary work. Amid 
the turmoil of a commercial career he found 
leisure to present to the world, in literary form, 
some of the results of his vast experience. From 
time to time he has written, modestly, without 
effort or pretension, yet with an ability which 
would do credit to some of the practiced pens 
of literature, a series of letters upon topics 
of high interest. His Letters to Young Men — 
twenty thousand letters to young men have been 



1 68 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

gratuitously distributed in the past twenty years — 
Success and Failure, Making and Saving, may be 
perused with profit by all who wish to emulate 
the worthy example of a worthy man. He has 
also published a volume of five hundred pages, 
Sketches of Travel in the Old and New World. 

"There is no citizen in the South who, by his 
teachings and example, and by the introduction 
of wise and beneficent measures, and by the 
foundation of a financial institution for the 
encouragement of the young, by building and 
founding commercial houses, has been of more 
benefit to the city and state of his adoption 
than George W. Williams." 

JOHN R. READ 

John R. Read was born at Antrim, New 
Hampshire, September 5, 1831. His parents 
were among the early settlers of Massachusetts 
and were of Puritan origin. 

He came to Charleston, South Carolina, in 
1850 and engaged in the mercantile business with 
his brother, under the firm name of W. W. and 
J. R. Read, which afterward became the well- 
known house of J. R. Read and Company. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 169 

During the Civil War Mr. Read's sympathies 
were with the South. He was an active member 
of the famous fire department of Charleston 
which rendered valuable assistance to the Con- 
federate cause during the war period. 

He was a leading merchant in the city of 
Charleston for sixty years. He was always 
ready to assist any enterprise which stood for the 
upbuilding of the city of his adoption. 

He was vice-president of the Chamber of Com- 
merce, an active member of many charitable 
organizations, and a liberal contributor to all 
objects of merit. 

Mr. Read became a member of the New Eng- 
land Society in 1858, served as a member of the 
committee on charity, and at the time of his 
death, January 23, 191 1, was senior vice-president. 

He was a member of Grace Episcopal Church 
for fifty-six years and was devoted to its interests, 
serving as vestryman and warden. 

Mr. Read's fine spirit of magnanimity was 
exhibited in an incident which occurred during 
his service as senior warden. A new departure 
was proposed by the rector which meant radical 
changes in the conduct of the church service and 
which also involved the expenditure of a large sum 



I70 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

of money. This venture was vigorously opposed 
by Mr. Read. One year after the changes were 
made, Mr. Read said: "I was wrong in my 
opposition." A short time afterward he died, 
leaving a legacy to the church and designating 
that it be used in payment of the debt incurred 
by the changes he had opposed. 



JOHN SOMERS BUIST 

John Somers Buist, M.A., M.D., was born in 
Charleston, South Carolina, November 26, 1839. 
He graduated at the College of Charleston in 
1859 and at the Medical College of South Carolina 
in 1 86 1. He immediately entered the Confeder- 
ate Army as an assistant surgeon and for a time 
served with the famous Hampton Legion. In 
1863 he was promoted to the rank of surgeon 
major and attached to Colonel Haskell's command 
in General Robert E. Lee's army, where he served 
with marked ability and great gallantry. 

At the close of the war, Dr. Buist returned to 
Charleston and became one of the most promi- 
nent physicians and surgeons in his native state, 
successively holding the following important 
positions: city health officer, surgeon to the 




JAMES B. CAMPBELL 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 171 

Roper Hospital and to the United States Marine 
Hospital, president of the South Carolina Medi- 
cal Society, professor of general surgery at the 
Medical College of South Carolina, a member of 
the first board of commissioners of the New 
Roper Hospital, vice-president of the Board of 
Commissioners of the Charleston Orphan House, 
trustee of the College of Charleston, and presi- 
dent of the Alumni Association of the College of 
Charleston. 

Dr. Buist was not only a great influence in 
his professional life but also as a man of affairs 
generally in the community. He was a director 
in the Dime Savings Bank and a director in the 
Charleston Consolidated Company. He was one 
of the most prominent Masons in South Carohna, 
being one of the few men of his state to attain the 
thirty-third degree in that famous order. 

Dr. Buist became a member of the New Eng- 
land Society in 1881, served as steward for many 
years, and was at the time of his death, Septem- 
ber 29, 1910, junior vice-president. He also 
delivered a number of addresses to the Society, 
which is another evidence of his wonderful ver- 
satility. As a public speaker he had few peers in 
South Carolina. 



172 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

VAN NEST TALMAGE 

Van Nest Talmage was born in Brooklyn, 
New York, March, 1844. He was a business 
genius from his early boyhood. He founded the 
well-known firm of Dan Talmage and Sons of 
New York when a mere youth. 

Mr. Talmage came to Charleston, South 
Carolina, in 187 1 and within an incredibly short 
time built up the largest rice business in South 
Carolina. He became a life member of the New 
England Society in 1877. At the time of his 
death the Society by a unanimous vote adopted 
the following minute : 

" In the mysterious orderings of Divine Provi- 
dence, we are called upon to record the loss by 
death of a member of this Society, Mr. Van Nest 
Talmage, who after a brief illness passed to his 
rest on March 30, 1880. Be it 

^^ Resolved, That we hereby unitedly express a 
sense of the loss we, in common with the com- 
munity at large, have sustained in the removal of 
this estimable man. His was a character of rare 
merit; by nature manly and generous; in dis- 
position genial and considerate; in habit indus- 
trious and temperate; denying himself for the 
sake of charity to others. Nor did his benevo- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 173 

lence confine itself to simple alms-deeds, as his 
personal endeavor in support of public enterprise 
and his zealous devotion to the interests of the 
young of the Orphan House and Grace Church 
Sunday School will bear ample testimony. 

"In his charities, which were profuse, he was 
systematic and consistent; in his labors earnest 
and indomitable. In all the manifold relation- 
ships of life, religious, social, and commercial, he 
seemed ever to be actuated by a high sense of 
honor and the promptings of a warm, sympa- 
thetic, and generous heart. 

"Such men never go from us unwept and 
unmissed. 

^^ Resolved, That these resolutions be published 
in the News and Courier and a copy of this action 
of the Society be spread upon the records and 
another forwarded to the widow of the deceased 
in testimony of the admiration and regard we 
entertain for the memory of her generous dead." 

The News and Courier published the follow- 
ing editorial, April i, 1880: 

"It is not a matter of form to say that Mr. 
Van Nest Talmage will be sorely missed in 
Charleston. No call w^as made upon him for a 
public or charitable purpose which was not 



174 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

cheerfully and liberally responded to, and he was 
withal broad and progressive in his mercantile 
policy, as well as rigidly conscientious and singu- 
larly farsighted. 

"Mr, Talmage changed the whole current of 
the rice business in Charleston, initiating and 
making successful the system of shipping the 
grain directly to the Western consumers, instead 
of taking the old way of New York. 

"Only thirty-five years old, the nephew of 
Dr. DeWitt Talmage, full of life and enterprise, 
he had already made himself conspicuous among 
Charleston merchants, and might weU hope to 
have before him a long career of good fortune and 
usefulness. Incessant work caused the illness 
which ended in his untimely death. 

"Mr. Talmage had more friends than he 
knew. Charleston needs just such men as he, 
and it wiU be hard to fiU his place. 

"The funeral services of this estimable gentle- 
man took place at Grace Church yesterday after- 
noon, the Reverend C. C. Pinckney, D.D., the 
rector, officiating. The casket was covered with 
floral offerings. The cortege was followed by the 
New England Society and the Chamber of 
Commerce. The seats on the right of the church 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 175 

were occupied by the children of the Charleston 
Orphan House, to whose spiritual culture Mr. 
Talmage devoted a great deal of his time. Those 
on the left were occupied by the children of Grace 
Church Sunday School, of which the deceased was 
also an active officer. The seats in the main aisle 
were filled with a large concourse of citizens, 
among whom were many of the most prominent 
merchants, lawyers, and physicians in the city, 
and by a very large concourse of ladies." 



JOHN P. KENNEDY BRYAN 

John P. Kennedy Bryan was born in Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, September 10, 1852. He 
was the third son of George S. Bryan, judge of 
the United States District Court for South 
Carolina, and Rebecca L. Dwight. He was edu- 
cated in the schools of Charleston, Princeton 
University, and the universities of Berhn and 
Leipzig. 

At Princeton he earned the degree of A.B. in 
1873, graduating with first honor in the class of 
which Dr. Henry van Dyke was a member. He 
was a mental science Fellow and a student of 
philosophy and law at the University of Berlin 



176 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

from 1873 to 1874, and a student of the Univer- 
sity of Leipzig from 1874 to 1875. He returned 
to Princeton and received the degree of A.M. in 
1876. He studied law in Charleston and was 
admitted to the bar of South Carolina in 1877. 

Mr. Bryan was a member of the constitu- 
tional convention in 1895 and was prominent and 
influential in its deliberations. 

As a lawyer Mr. Bryan had few peers in the 
South. "His practice was wide and varied, 
including many cases of great interest and public 
importance. Soon after his admission to the bar, 
he was engaged for the defense in the Ku Klux 
trials, extending over the period from 1877 to 
1883. He was counsel for the United States 
government in the conspkacy cases, 1 889-1 899, 
and in prize cases tried in the port of Charleston 
during the Spanish-American War. He was 
widely known as an able and experienced admi- 
ralty lawyer. He argued before the Supreme 
Court of the United States the leading cases 
which settled constitutional questions involved 
in the Dispensary Law, and did much other 
pioneer work before that court and the courts of 
the state." He was a member of the legal 
advisory board during the war between the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 177 

United States of America and the empires of 
Germany and of Austria-Hungary. 

Mr. Bryan was deeply interested in education. 
He served for a number of years as a trustee of the 
Charleston High School, the College of Charles- 
ton, and the University of the South. 

Mr. Bryan became a member of the New 
England Society, December 22, 1898, and was 
one of its most distinguished and useful members. 
His addresses on Forefathers' Day were among 
the most eloquent and scholarly ever delivered 
before the Society. 

He died suddenly on October 25, 1918, at the 
zenith of his power and in the faithful discharge 
of his duties. 

The three tributes which follow are typical of 
many estimates of Mr. Bryan's useful career: 

"The death of Kennedy Bryan takes from the 
world a man of rare and admirable gifts, who used 
them with high fidelity in the service of his God, 
his friends, and his fellow-men. His brilliant 
mind, his rich eloquence, his unselfish patriotism, 
his devotion to duty, his warm and steadfast affec- 
tions, his sincere and simple Christian character, 
gave true nobility to his life and vital charm to 
his person. 



178 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"Worthy of the best traditions of his native 
state, he served her loyally and quietly without a 
thought of self, and well deserves her gratitude. 

"Princeton University, his alma mater, cher- 
ishes his name as one of her noblest sons. His 
praise is fragrant on our lips, his memory is dear 
to our hearts. His reward is great and sure in that 
Heavenly Kingdom where he has been welcomed as 
a good and faithful servant whose ten talents were 
consecrated to his Master's work and the welfare 
of humanity." — Rev. Henry van Dyke, D.D. 

"He was a pre-eminently able lawyer. There 
has been no abler advocate at the bar of South 
Carolina within the memory of living lawyers. 
Intellectual endowments of the highest order had 
been developed by a liberal education at home 
and abroad, and trained by long years of experi- 
ence in a wide and varied practice. 

"Within the circle of litigation he was always 
the warrior, strong, courageous, resourceful, and 
armed from head to foot. He fought his cases to 
victory or defeat. He never compromised, he 
never surrendered. Whenever he resumed pro- 
fessional responsibilities, he put himself and all his 
resources unreservedly into the cause, and with 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 179 

each case he took infinite pains. His arguments 
to the court were exhaustive expositions of law, 
and his addresses to the jury were powerful pres- 
entations of fact. 

"He was a pioneer in respect of the law upon 
many questions which have now been settled. 
He conducted many leading cases. The opinion 
of the Supreme Court of the United States upon 
more than one public issue follows the Unes of his 
brief. 

"His services were always at the command of 
the bar, the city, the state and country, and were 
often employed. 

"He sought and held no public place in the 
profession. His death vacates no public office; 
but much more than that, it is a public loss. It 
creates in our midst a vacancy which the public 
cannot fill."— WiUiam C. Miller. 

"By the sudden death of J. P. Kennedy Bryan 
the community has lost a brilliant personality and 
the bar of the State a member whose legal and 
forensic abilities commanded high admiration. 
Mr. Bryan had a rarely fine mind, which he had 
cultivated and trained by study and reflection. 
He had a profound knowledge, not only of the 



i8o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

law, but of the historical and philosophical 
foundations of the law. He was a student of 
government and a keen observer and analyst of 
political and popular currents. He had the 
power of expression extraordinarily developed, 
and many of his court house addresses might have 
been preserved in permanent record, as they 
remain in the memory of his hearers as almost 
classic examples of persuasive oratory. His inter- 
ests were wide, and his services, especially in the 
cause of education and in the exploration of con- 
stitutional law, were notable. He was intensely 
patriotic, of his country and state. His social 
graces were many; he was an interesting and 
charming companion, and the center of a devoted 
family circle. His swift passing is like the 
snapping out of a bright light." — The Charleston 
Evening Post, October 28, 1918. 

PERCIVAL HANAHAN WHALEY 

Percival Hanahan Whaley was born on Edisto 
Island, South Carolina, May 17, 1853. He was 
an alumnus of Trinity College, Hartford, Con- 
necticut, and of the Berckley Divinity School, 
Middletown, Connecticut. The University of the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA i8i 

South conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of 
Divinity on account of scholarly research. 

Dr. Whaley held important charges in Con- 
necticut, South Carolina, and Florida. He was a 
clergyman of the Episcopal church. He was an 
eloquent preacher, a profound theologian, and a 
historian of high rank. At the time of his death 
he was writing a history of the state of Florida 
and a history of the Episcopal church in South 
Carolina. 

Dr. Whaley published a number of historic 
pamphlets which attracted scholarly attention. 

He became a member of the New England 
Society in 191 1. 

After his death, which occurred at Rochester, 
Minnesota, September 2, 191 5, the Right Rev- 
erend Wm. A. Guerry, D.D., bishop of South 
Carolina, paid him the following tribute : 

"Percival Whaley was one of the most lovable 
men I have ever known, warm hearted, thoughtful 
of others, unselfish, never sparing himself where 
duty called or where he could be of service to his 
fellow-men; he endeared himself to all who knew 
him. Like the holy priest of whom William Law 
writes in his Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, 
he was full of the spirit of the Gospel, watching, 



1 82 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

laboring and praying for his people. Every soul 
in his parish was as dear to him as himself and he 
loved them all as he loved himself, because he 
prayed for them all as often as he prayed for 
himseh. 

"It was this broad-minded sympathy and love 
of his fellow-men that remained throughout his 
life his crowning virtue. Because he loved and 
trusted others, therefore he was without guile. 
Dr. Whaley was not only beloved by his own 
people but he was in a very real sense the pastor 
of all the people. He knew no denominational 
lines in his ministry. Like the Lord, he went 
among men as one that served, and never stopped 
to ask if any child of God who was in trouble or 
in need of his help was of his flock. 

"At the council of the church Dr. Whaley, 
upon my recommendation, was made histori- 
ographer of the diocese, a position for which he 
was eminently fitted. For the past six years he 
has been gathering material for a history of the 
church in South Carolina, and I had hoped that 
he might be spared to carry on and complete this 
most important work. I feel, however, that 
what he has already accompHshed in the way of 
preparation for such a history will be invaluable 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 183 

for the man who will follow him. The whole 
diocese of South Carolina owes him a debt of 
gratitude for what he has done, and it is difficult 
at this time to see how his place can be filled. In 
viewing his life as a whole, we are struck by the 
fact that it was a full and well- rounded life." 

At the same time one of the leading news- 
papers of South Carolina published the following 
editorial : 

"A rarely charming and lovable personality 
passed in the death of the Reverend Percival H. 
Whaley. His faith was real, his reason clear, and 
his mind truly cultured. He was a good friend 
and a devoted pastor. He had understanding of 
men and a fine sympathy for their joys and 
sorrows, and he had that vision of the divine 
which is neither fleeting nor uncertain, because it 
is not so strained as to blind nor so narrow as to 
weary with its holding. 

"He had a comprehending mind, richly stored 
with treasure of its own searching, a fine appre- 
ciation of letters, and a facility of speech and 
writing that gave great charm to his company. 
Perhaps, best of all, he had a sense of proportion. 
He was an admirable and a kindly type of the 
humanist who reads the story of his kind equally 



1 84 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

in ancient lore and living souls. An illumined 
spirit has gone into the light." 

OTHER SONS OF NEW ENGLAND 

In addition to the New Englanders and 
descendants of New Englanders who made their 
homes in Charleston and who became members 
of the New England Society, there were many 
others of prominence and influence. Among the 
large number a few notable worthies might be 
mentioned. Three of the most distinguished 
bishops of South Carolina were born in New Eng- 
land — the Right Reverend Theodore Dehon, 
D.D., and the Right Reverend Nathaniel Bowen, 
D.D., were born in Boston, Massachusetts, and 
the Right Reverend W. B. W. Howe, D.D., was 
born in Claremont, New Hampshire. Dr. Basil 
Lanneau Gildersleeve, the greatest classical scholar 
America has produced, was of New England 
stock, though born in Charleston, South Carolina. 
Dr. Gildersleeve was the guest of the New Eng- 
land Society at its annual celebration in 1892, 
and delivered a notable address from which the 
following is quoted : 

"The honor of being your guest on this occasion 
is an honor that I prize most highly. It is one of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 185 

the most precious assurances I have ever received 
that the affection with which my heart has always 
turned toward my native city, toward the home 
of my childhood and of my opening youth, is not 
wasted affection. True, in one sense, there can 
be no such thing as wasted affection, for honest 
love enriches the lover, but to find, after aU these 
years of absence, that the answering love is still 
there would stir a duller heart than mine is, and I 
am happy as well as proud to be with you tonight, 
as I have always been proud and happy to recall 
the high traditions of that old Charleston to 
which I belong, the Charleston that antedates the 
flood of Civil War, 

"Among the names that make up the roll of 
your honored Society, there are not a few that 
bring back the prominent figures which graced 
the scene when I was a boyish spectator of the life 
of Charleston, the grave but gracious divines, the 
learned and brilliant lawyers, the skilful and 
beloved physicians, the enterprising and liberal 
merchants of fifty years ago, none the less true 
Charlestonians because they were true New Eng- 
landers. To be sure, it has been said that the 
reason why the New Englanders who came to the 
South made such characteristic Southerners is to 



i86 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

be sought in the fact that the chief of those who 
came were Southern in their sympathies, but 
whether that is so or not, they brought with them 
a heritage of noble traditions, of high purpose, of 
dauntless will, that formed a distinct addition to 
the moral wealth of the community. But I am 
not without bias in this matter. My own lot has 
made me a typical Southerner, and from my first 
conscious breath to this day I have recognized the 
debt of my nativity and have wrought and suf- 
fered in my measure for the land that gave me 
birth. And yet, if I were a resident of Charleston, 
I should have a right to sit among you as a mem- 
ber, and not merely as a guest, for, while the soil 
on which I am standing is peculiarly hallowed 
ground to me, Vermont and Connecticut hold the 
graves of my father's forefathers, who in their day 
were rebels, as was their descendant in his. And 
many a typical Southerner is in my case. With 
the recent revival of interest in Revolutionary and 
Colonial matters, there has been much tracing of 
genealogical lines, and I have been amazed to see 
in more than one instance the revelation of New 
England ancestry where New England ancestry 
had never been suspected before — Magnolia and 
Mayflower wedded in those far-off days. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 187 

"In the angry quarrel that parted the family a 
generation ago, there was much talk about the 
difference of race, and all kinship was passionately 
disowned, but the common blood asserted itself in 
that very protest — and if there is no community 
on this side of the water, the common mother of 
us all is only a few generations off. Now I am 
very willing to admit that I did not always enter- 
tain these rational and philosophic views, and 
when I was asked to respond to the toast, ' Our 
Country,' I was a little puzzled to know why I, a 
narrow provincial, should have been selected to 
treat so wide a theme, and I felt at first a sense of 
unfitness that was somewhat embarrassing. But 
despite the modesty that I possess and have 
acquired by practice, I began to understand that 
I was eminently qualified for the function to 
which I was called, and the toastmaster knew 
that if he gave me any sentiment involving an 
allusion to Old Charleston, I should ramble on 
till midnight, remembering and remembering 
more than I ever knew and more than anybody 
could contradict, and so he assigned to me a 
theme which he must have known I had studied 
under circumstances that were well calculated to 
clarify my views." 



1 88 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



THE VISIT OF DANIEL WEBSTER 

The Honorable Daniel Webster, the great 
orator, diplomat, and statesman, the pride of all 
New England, visited Charleston during the 
month of May, 1847. The New England Society 
gave a dinner in honor of the great American on 
the afternoon of May 8. 

The data used in telling the story of this 
auspicious event are drawn largely from an article 
written at the time by Mr. A. S. Willington, the 
distinguished editor of the Courier and vice- 
president of the New England Society. The 
entertainment tendered Mr. Webster was held 
in St. Andrew's Hall. 

"The spacious chamber where the North 
Briton is wont to celebrate festive and hospitable 
rites, under the smiles of his patron saint, was 
beautifully, tastefully, and appropriately deco- 
rated for the occasion, the use of their magnificent 
and commodious hall having been generously 
and gratuitously tendered for the purpose by 
vote of the St. Andrew's Society. At the head 
of the table, immediately behind the presiding 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 189 

officer, and in front of a large and splendid mirror 
reflecting the whole festive scene, stood a minia- 
ture and mimic representation of the Bunker Hill 
monument — a column made of roses and a rich 
variety of other beautiful flowers, presented by a 
member of the Society, having been erected with 
floral treasures culled from his own magnificent 
flower garden on Charleston Neck — from the top 
of which floated a little streamer with the inscrip- 
tion 'Bunker Hill.' The other inscriptions on 
appropriate and decorated fields were: 'Welcome, 
Thrice Welcome, Bright Star of the East,' 'Our 
Country, Our Whole Country, and Nothing but 
Our Country,' 'Ashburton Treaty, Signed at 
Washington, August 9, 1842,' 

"In the lamented absence through indisposi- 
tion of Doddridge Crocker, Esq., the venerable 
president of the Society, A. S. Willington, Esq., 
vice-president, presided, assisted by the Honorable 
William Rice, recorder of the city and judge of 
the City Court of Charleston, Colonel B. F. Hunt, 
Colonel J. H. Taylor, and E. M. Beach, Esq. A 
number of distinguished guests were present. 
Among them were the Honorable John B. O'Neall, 
one of the superior lord judges of the state; the 
Honorable R. B. Gilchrist, judge of the United 



1 90 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

States Court for the District of South Carolina, 
the Honorable James Hamilton, formerly mem- 
ber of Congress from Beaufort and Colleton, and 
former governor of the state; the Honorable 
William Aiken, former governor of the state; the 
Honorable R. B. Rhett, member of Congress from 
Barnwell, Beaufort, and Colleton districts; the 
Honorable I. E. Holmes, member of Congress 
from Charleston district; the Honorable F. H. 
Elmore, former member of Congress from Rich- 
land and other districts and president of the 
Bank of the State of South Carolina; and the 
Right Reverend Ignatius Aloysius Reynolds, 
Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston; the Honor- 
able W. J. Grayson, former member of Congress 
from Beaufort and Colleton districts and now 
United States collector of the port of Charleston; 
the Honorable T. L. Hutchinson, mayor of the 
city of Charleston; Henry Bailey, Esq., attorney- 
general of the state; James L. Petigru, Esq.; 
M. Hall McAllister, of Savannah, Georgia; 
Colonel Thomas N. Dawkins, one of the state 
solicitors; William P. Finley, Esq., president of 
the College of Charleston; Daniel Ravenel, Esq., 
president of the Charleston Bible Society, and 
others. The scene was not only social and festive 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 191 

in the highest degree but at once dignified by 
lofty and thrilling eloquence; affecting from the 
expression of generous sentiment and fraternal 
feeling, and enlivened with rare humor and 
sparkling wit; and further animated and cheered 
with music, both instrumental and vocal, from a 
band of skilful performers and from many and 
rich-toned voices mingling in concert and sweet 
concord with the soft notes of the piano. It was 
indeed a beautiful and grateful spectacle to witness 
the happy union of the generous sons of New Eng- 
land and their descendants, worthy sons of noble 
sires, with the warm-hearted children of the 
sunny South, in doing homage and honor to the 
genius, services, and worth of the great statesman 
of New England, the eminent diplomatist of the 
Republic, the 'conquerer of an honorable peace,' 
the illustrious and honored elder brother of our 
great American and republican family. The dis- 
tinguished guest was himself in the highest spirits 
and he diffused the happy, generous contagion to 
all around and manifested by his noble and crystal 
flow of eloquence and feeling and his fine play of 
keen or gentle humor that his heart was in the 
gladsome scene and that the delight, of which he 
was the fountain and infinite source to others, 



192 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

was reflected back in a copious and refreshing 
tide to his own bosom. While gazing on his noble 
form, his colossal proportions, and intellectual 
brow — almost a giant in body and quite a Titan 
in mind — ^w^e could not forbear the mental 
exclamation : 

A combination and a form indeed, 
Where every God did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man. 

"After the luxuries of the feast, the cloth was 
removed for toast, speech, sentiment, and song." 

Mr. Willington proposed as the principal toast 
of the occasion: 

"South Carolina and Massachusetts: We 
rejoice upon the occasion which assembles together 
their distinguished men around the same festive 
board." 

The eloquent responses followed. Benjamin 
Faneuil Hunt, Esq., spoke as follows: 

"Mr. President: As our Society dispenses 
with the usual formalities of a set occasion and is 
determined to receive our guest as an old family 
friend and connection whom we have found jour- 
neying through the land of our adoption, I shall 
take leave to invite your attention to a few 
observations, after which I shall propose a toast. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 193 

"Our experience authorizes us to assure him 
that he will return to his own New England farm 
more attached than ever to that Constitution 
which, we trust, is destined through all time to 
come to bind together all parts of our country in 
one great and glorious Republic, each state 
governing its own internal affairs, which practical 
experience enables it to do wisely, while the 
Federal government is left free to manage our 
national concerns. 

"We hail with pleasure the interchange of 
unofficial and social intercourse by the statesmen 
of the different quarters of the country. It can- 
not fail to wear away that distrust which is prone 
to render strangers distant and suspicious and, I 
may add, selfish in their conduct of affairs. 

"We believe that the more Americans see and 
know of each other at home, the more easily will 
they be convinced that, although their internal 
arrangements may differ, all can join in a cordial 
and hearty union as one great people — a mutual 
respect, reciprocal benefit, and social intercourse 
will every day diminish those causes of difference 
that sometimes mar the harmony of our councils. 
Each state will thus respect and regard the insti- 
tutions and social arrangements of every other 



194 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and all combine to elevate and extend the honor 
and interest of our only Republic which in art and 
in arms maintains a proud equality among the 
nations of the earth. 

"No states have more reason to entertain the 
most cordial relations than South Carolina and 
Massachusetts. When the port of Boston was 
shut and the stubborn spirit of her people rebuked 
and controlled by foreigners, South Carolina, dis- 
tant as she was from the scene of wrong and not 
necessarily included in its immediate effect, dis- 
dained to profit by the sufferings of a sister-colony 
but promptly made common cause with the Bay 
State and resolved to cheer her spirits and share 
her fortunes. 

"The scenes of Lexington and Bunker Hill 
soon roused her kindred spirit into action — the 
military stores and forts were seized — South 
Carolina became a rebel colony and a British fleet 
entered Charleston harbor. If the sons of the 
Pilgrims fired the first morning gun of freedom's 
glorious day, Fort Moultrie thundered forth a 
gallant response and rendered immortal the ever- 
green Palmetto. The oppressor was taught that 
the good old thirteen, when right and liberty were 
at stake, were animated with one spirit, were true 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 195 

to their kindred blood. The sons of the wanderers 
of the Mayflower united with the descendant of 
the Huguenot in a firm phalanx and stood shoulder 
to shoulder during the dark and stormy days of 
the Revolution. Is it not fitting, then, that their 
posterity should hand down to unborn ages, un- 
impaired, that fraternal kindness which was born 
of a common conflict and a common triumph ? 

"Fortune resolved to leave out no element 
essential to a perpetual and friendly union of the 
North and the South. The generous and high- 
souled chivalry that led South Carolina without 
hesitation to peril her own existence in a com- 
bined opposition to the oppression by which the 
legislation of the mother-country was seeking to 
humble and crush forever the unyielding spirit of 
New England was never to be forgotten; and 
when overwhelming military power had laid pros- 
trate the fortunes of the South and held her 
gallant spirits bound in inaction, in this dark 
hour of her fate the military spirit of a New 
England mechanic conceived the project to res- 
cue the South at every hazard, and gave pledge 
to Washington to do so or perish in the effort. 

"Perilous as was the attempt, the commander- 
in-chief resolved to indulge the aspirations of his 



196 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

favorite general; and after a march which might 
be tracked by the bloody footsteps of his barefoot 
and almost naked followers, the troops of Greene 
were united with the followers of Sumter and 
Marion. Every gallant warrior of the South 
started at the beat of the drum and the blast of 
the clarion of the North. Conflict followed con- 
flict until, one by one, every post of the enemy 
from Ninety-SLx to Charleston fell before their 
united valor. The tide of war was rolled back 
until at Yorktown the sword of the proud Corn- 
waUis was dehvered to another son of New Eng- 
land, and Lincoln was accorded a noble retribu- 
tion for his gallant but unsuccessful defense of 
Charleston during its protracted siege. 

"Every battlefield of our state contains 
beneath its sod the bones of New England men 
who fell in the defense of the South. Is it not 
right that the land, won by the united energies 
and sprinkled with the common blood of both, 
should remain forever one heritage — where the 
descendants of those who made it freedom's 
sacred soil may recognize, in its whole length and 
breadth, Hheir own, their native land,' the land 
their fathers held by the glorious title of the 
sword ? 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 197 

" It is in this feeling that we hold every son of 
the South entitled to a home and welcome among 
the green hills and pure streams of New England. 

"The North and the South are but apartments 
in the house of our fathers, and long, long may 
their inmates live in harmony together in the 
ennobling relations of children of the common 
conquerors of a common country." 

To Mr. Webster: 

"You, sir, for the first time, look upon that 
sunny side of the national domain where we 
have planted our habitations and garnered up 
our hearts; here are our homes and our altars; 
here is the field of our labors; here are the laws 
and institutions which protect us ; here, too, is to 
many the birthplace of their children and their 
own destined graves; here our first allegiance is 
due, which we feel is in all things consistent with 
fidelity to the great Republic of which our state 
is an integral portion. Neither have we forgotten 
the happy days of early life, those well-loved 
scenes of ' our childhood's home ' ! Fidelity to the 
land of our adoption finds no guaranty in a 
renegade desertion of that of our birth; but we 
turn, with feelings of cherished veneration, to 
where our Pilgrim Fathers in sorrow and privation 



198 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

laid the deep foundations of a new empire based 
on the eternal principles of civil and religious 
liberty, and sustained by a general education and 
by public and private virtue. We hallow their 
memories and tread with reverence on their graves. 
Our filial piety is not abated by distance, and we 
hail the coming among us of a worthy son of New 
England as a messenger from our fatherland. 

"We recognize in you one who has exhibited 
the influence of her institutions in a resplendent 
light. The son of a New England farmer, the 
pupil of the free schools and college of your native 
state, your own energies have placed you on an 
elevation at the bar, in the Senate, and in the 
Cabinet, where the civilized world can behold an 
orator, a jurist, and a statesman, who bears no 
adventitious title and yet is known and recognized 
by nature's own stamp of greatness. 

"As a diplomatist, you have secured peace 
without any sacrifice of national honor, and may 
wear your civic crown as proudly as the victori- 
ous soldier does his plume. We shall record your 
visit in our archives as a part of our annals, and 
the recollection of it will always be among the 
most acceptable reminiscences in the history of 
our Society. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 199 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen, I offer a 
toast: 

"Our Guest: He has a heart big enough to 
comprehend his whole country, a head wise 
enough to discern her best interests. We cheer 
him on his way to view her in all her various 
aspects, well assured that the more he sees of her, 
the better he will hke her." 

Mr. Webster said, in substance, he was bound 
to say a few words in acknowledgment of the 
numerous kind things which had just been said 
of him, and the kind manner in which they had 
been received. In answer to the testimonials of 
respect and the high compliments so eloquently 
paid him by his New England friend, he must be 
permitted to say that it was to him a high source of 
gratification to find himself in the city of Charles- 
ton — the long renowned and hospitable city of the 
South — among those whom he regarded as fellow- 
countrymen and who regarded him as a fellow- 
countryman. The marks of respect and affection 
thus tendered him had penetrated his heart with 
the most grateful emotions. Colonel Hunt had 
been pleased, with great propriety and elegance, 
to refer to that great instrument of government, 
the Constitution, and to speak of it in terms 



200 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

habitual to and expressive of the sentiment of all 
American bosoms. Whatever difference of opin- 
ion might exist with regard to some of its purposes, 
all agreed that it was the basis of our liberty, the 
cement of our union, and the source of our national 
prosperity and renown. True, the cardinal prin- 
ciple of that instrument and the interpretation of 
some of its provisions had, at times, led to agitating 
discussions and dangerous excitement, but all was 
now calm and repose, and be 

All the clouds which lowered o'er our house 
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. 

Mr. Webster said that he took great pleasure 
in making the wise choice that the sons of New 
England around him had made in coming to this 
state. He trusted they were not very badly off 
at home, and they appeared to be exceedingly 
comfortable here. Since 

The Winter's torrent and the mountain's roar 
Did not bind them to their native mountains more, 

they had not only acted wisely in coming hither 
but he really thought they could not have done 
better. 

Where on this continent, he asked, was there 
a higher freedom of social enjoyment or a more 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 201 

ready extension of the relations of private friend- 
ship and the courtesies of refined society than in 
this city and state; and he could not forbear a 
tribute to the intelligence, enterprise, and hospi- 
tality of the citizens of Charleston, where the exiled 
and the oppressed of the earth and the victims of 
religious persecution — the Huguenot as well as the 
Pilgrim — had ever found a sanctuary and a home; 
whither, as the name of this Hall instructed us, 
the enterprising North British merchant hied in 
the prosecution of business and for convivial 
enjoyment, and where that other people, the hap- 
less sons of Ireland, in our day the subjects of so 
much suffering and to whose relief the whole of 
our land, both North and South, was now hasten- 
ing with one heart and one purse, had also gathered 
as the home of the oppressed. 

Colonel Hunt, said Mr. Webster, had been 
pleased, in referring to his public services, to dis- 
course of the agency he had exercised on questions 
connected with the preservation of the peace of 
the earth. Our true national policy was a policy 
of peace. He had not felt for many years that it 
was at all necessary for us to display any more 
prowess in arms to secure us an enduring national 
renown; there was no danger that we should be 



202 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

underrated in the scale of nations by any defect 
in this particular. With these views he had, in 
his public course, directed his best efforts to pro- 
mote the peace of the world as best for the honor 
and prosperity of our land and in closest con- 
formity with the benign precepts of Christianity 
and the humane spirit of modern civilization. 

He said he could bear testimony to the able 
and honorable bearings of the distinguished sons 
of South Carolina in the councils of the nation. 
On all the great questions of peace and war, and 
other questions of national interest that had been 
discussed in the halls of legislation, they had been 
arrayed on the side of the country, and a debt of 
gratitude was their due. 

He descanted on the advantages to be derived 
from free intercourse between the inhabitants of 
the various sections of the Union and on the 
importance of mutual travel to enable us to see 
and know more of one another, and said that the 
more we saw and knew of each other, the higher 
would be our mutual appreciation, the greater 
would be our deference for each other's judgments 
and opinions, and that, by cultivating mutual 
feelings of kindness and courtesy, the stronger 
would be our ties of fraternal peace and concord, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 203 

the stronger the great bond of union which bound 
us together as United States. He added that 
these reasons were especially applicable in this 
era of developments so favorable to transportation 
and conveyance, in which distance was now less 
measured by space than time. 

Nobody, he added, would expect a speech from 
him at this social board — he had enough of 
speeches elsewhere — and it would be, in his judg- 
ment, to profane the occasion were he to inflict 
on the company a set discourse. Enough had 
been already said, and it only remained for him 
to tender his most earnest and cordial good wishes 
for the happiness and prosperity of the citizens of 
Charleston and the people of South Carolina. 

Mr. Webster concluded with the following toast : 

"The People of South Carolina: Distinguished 
for their hospitality and high social virtues as 
much as for the great names which, in past times 
and also in later times, they have given to the 
public service of the country." 

Later in the evening Mr. Webster proposed a 
toast to 

"The Memory of Robert Y. Hayne: A gentle- 
man of courteous and polished manners, of irre- 
proachable life, a lawyer of distinction and 



204 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

eminence, a statesman of ability and talent, a 
highly favored son of his native state." 

Another was proposed to 

"Charleston: Our Adopted Home. Honored 
in the recollections and associations of the past 
and present, she ever delights to honor genius, 
talent, and worth." 

Henry Bailey, Esq., being called for, said that 
in the absence of the excellent and accomplished 
chief magistrate of the city, who had been sud- 
denly called away from this assemblage by indis- 
position he had yielded to the request of some 
of his friends to undertake the grateful duty of 
responding to the sentiment which had just been 
uttered. He could not promise to perform it so 
gracefully as the gentleman on whom it would 
more appropriately have devolved, but he would 
yield to no one in the feelings of grateful pride 
which the sentiment itself and the cordial manner 
in which it had been received were so well calcu- 
lated to excite. As a native of Charleston, he 
could not but feel an honorable pride at her being 
supposed to merit the high compliment which had 
been expressed; and whether it were well merited 
or not, the kindness which dictated it could not 
fail to inspire a sentiment of profound gratitude 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 205 

for its expression. He therefore begged leave to 
return his sincere and hearty thanks for the 
honor which had been conferred on what was to 
him the home of his birth no less than of his 
affection. 

Charleston has ever delighted, Mr. Bailey con- 
tinued, to do honor to genius, talent, and worth; 
but however honorable this was to the character 
of her citizens, it was no less the dictate of a 
sagacious policy than of a generous appreciation 
of whatever was noble and meritorious. It was 
akin to that wise policy which, from the founda- 
tion of the city, had opened wide the doors of 
hospitality to the stranger and offered a home to 
the wanderer. By this means our numbers had 
been enlarged and our wealth and resources 
greatly increased. Charleston indeed owed much 
to her adopted citizens, and he might take this 
occasion to say that to none was she more indebted 
than to those who came from the granite hills of 
New England. Our distinguished guest had re- 
marked that in looking around this festive board 
and observing the large number of New England 
men who had here found a happy home, the first 
impression made upon his mind was that they 
were a very happy set of men; he begged leave to 



2o6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

add that they were not more fortunate in finding 
a happy home here than Charleston was in the 
acquisition of so large a number of valuable 
citizens. It was not merely that their energy, 
enterprise, ability, and integrity contributed so 
much to the development of our resources and so 
greatly increased our stock of material, moral, 
and intellectual wealth, but there was something 
in the New England character that diffused itself 
wherever her sons planted their feet and stamped 
upon everything around them all the best charac- 
teristics of civilization. They were, in fact, the 
descendants and representatives of perhaps the 
best and noblest specimen of the Anglo-Saxon 
race — a band of men nurtured by religious perse- 
cution and the severest sufferings into a hardy 
independence; and who, while they scorned sub- 
mission to tyranny of any sort, civil or religious, 
suffered no obstacles or difficulties to restrain their 
energy and enterprise. 

They were the first to discern the true prin- 
ciples of civil and religious liberty, and the 
principles which they discovered have been nobly 
carried out by their descendants on this continent. 
The world owes to these men a debt which has 
not yet been paid or acknowledged; but we, and 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 207 

through us the rest of mankind, are now reaping 
the rich fruits of their labors. Their spirit has 
pervaded our land and given character to our 
institutions; and it is destined to carry to all 
parts of this continent a more beneficent civiliza- 
tion than the world has heretofore witnessed. 
Our Western wilderness is fast filling up, and 
wherever our people go they carry with them the 
Bible in one hand and the institutions of freedom 
which they owe to the old independents, in the 
other; and the result points to a destiny, the most 
glorious ever achieved by any country under the 
sun. In conclusion, Mr. Bailey offered the follow- 
ing sentiment : 

"The Land of the Pilgrims: The cradle of the 
true principles of civil and religious liberty — the 
abode of all the sterner virtues that give dignity 
to humanity." 

The health of "James L. Petigru, Esq., the 
able jurist, the accomplished advocate, the pride 
of our bar, and one of the dearest sons of South 
Carolina," was proposed. This toast was received 
with enthusiastic cheers and drew from Mr. Peti- 
gru the following response : 

Mr. Petigru said that he would be over- 
whelmed by the consciousness of unmerited praise 



2o8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and covered with confusion if he were obhged to 
take into view the great disparity, the immense 
difference between his moderate pretensions, and 
the terms in which his honorable friend near him 
had ushered in his name. But he was reheved 
from much of this embarrassment because the 
flattering demonstrations with which his name 
had been received were properly a compliment to 
their illustrious guest and showed the degree in 
which they honored him by the "applause bestowed 
on me, not as an individual, but as a pupil and 
follower" of the school in which he, their guest, was 
a master and a leader. Although it was true that 
he could not boast one drop of English or New 
England blood, he was never less among strangers 
than when surrounded by the sons of the Pilgrims. 
And it appeared to him that the history and char- 
acter of New England had something that came 
home to the mind of everyone who sympathized 
with the progress of the human race, as a bond 
of interest and affectionate concern. It was in the 
New England communities, for the first time in 
modern ages, that feudalism was altogether 
rejected and society was organized on principles 
such as good and wise men had taught in moral 
and religious discourse, but which the wisest and 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 209 

best of them had rather wished than hoped to see 
in practice. The principles of social order exem- 
plified in the New England commonwealth were 
intimately connected with the progress of modern 
civilization, and it was unnecessary to foUow the 
course of their development in the vast prosperity 
which those commonwealths had attained, and in 
the influence of their example on neighboring 
states and our distant people. But among the 
courses of their great success, perhaps the most 
prevalent was found in their steady attachment 
to the rules of civil right and invariable obedience 
to the authority of the laws. This rendered them 
the most conservative, as their institutions 
rendered them the most liberal, of men on the 
subject of government. Great must be the 
merits that would raise an individual to the first 
place, where all are pre-eminent. It was the 
policy of states to cherish their great men, and 
particularly those who surpassed their contem- 
poraries in those very branches in which they all 
excel. To such a name he wished to invoke their 
attention. He begged leave to call to their minds: 
"The Memory of Joseph Storey: Who, by his 
contributions to the study of that science which 



2IO THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

teaches and secures the rights of men and is there- 
fore far more intimately than all others connected 
with the welfare of society, deserved to be remem- 
bered as an honor to his country and a benefactor 
of the human race." 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 211 



THE CIVIL WAR 

Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the 
Associated Press, was the orator at the annual 
festival of the New England Society, Decem- 
ber 22, 1908. Mr. Stone's address was of a reli- 
gious character and made a profound impression 
upon his auditors. After returning to New York, 
he said to a group of friends: 

"I was very greatly impressed with the unique 
character of the New England Society at Charles- 
ton, and it certainly impressed me as one of the 
most remarkable organizations in America, in 
that it lived through the Civil War and main- 
tained its high reputation throughout, although 
located in the very birthplace of secession." 

There were a number of New England societies 
in the South prior to the CivU War, but only one 
survived that unfortunate conflict, namely, the 
New England Society of Charleston. 

In a study of the New England Society in its 
relations to the Civil War period, it is necessary 
to observe three distinct points : First, the senti- 
ment and opinion of the New Englanders in 



212 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Charleston prior to i860. Secondly, their actions 
from i860 to 1865. Thirdly, their conduct in the 
tr3dng period of reconstruction that followed the 
downfall of Confederacy. 

In considering these three lines of suggestion, 
it is the purpose of the writer to let the members of 
the Society speak for themselves. It has been the 
custom of New Englanders for three hundred years 
to express their own opinions in their own fearless 
and inimitable way. 

THE SENTIMENT AND OPINION LEADING UP TO THE 
CLIMACTERIC YEAR 1860 

The first speaker to be introduced is the elo- 
quent and fervent orator, Colonel B. F. Hunt. 
This address was Colonel Hunt's valedictory 
before the Society, delivered just prior to his 
death, in 1854: 

"Mr. President and Gentlemen: The event 
we this day commemorate marked an era in 
human affairs without example and eminently 
providential. The seed sown by the Mayflower 
has spread far and wide to the uttermost parts of 
this great Republic. The offspring of a little 
band of Christians and RepubHcans have carried 
with them the language, the religion, and the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 213 

habits of self-government of their fathers to every 
quarter of this country; untrammeled by any 
state religion, without privileged orders, hereditary 
rulers, or mercenary guards, they have contributed 
to found a new world powerful for protection 
against foreign enemies and securing the blessings ' 
of individual liberty. They have aided in solving 
the great problem of man's capacity for self- 
government, when education, industry, and reli- 
gion constitute the basis of national character. 
In every region they have penetrated, they have 
united with the native and adopted citizen in 
working out this great truth, and founded their 
dwelling-places in the full resolve to surround 
them with all the immunities of home. The 
revolution which secured our national existence 
being the result of the united toils and the mingled 
blood of every patriot, our whole liberated conti- 
nent became a common domain, held by the indis- 
putable right of common conquest, and the same 
generations of men put the finishing stroke to 
their labors by the adoption of that Constitution 
which, protecting the domestic rights of the 
separate states, unites the whole into one great 
empire for national purposes, without any claim 
to control the institutions of the separate states. 



214 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

This contract our fathers made; under it our 
country has flourished beyond the most sanguine 
expectations of its founders. We must be con- 
tent with the Union as they organized it. The 
United States Legislature has no more authority 
beyond the enumerated powers expressed in the 
Constitution than with the affairs of Russia or 
England. Their jurisdiction is limited by the 
written charter under which they assemble — all 
is expressed, nothing implied. To attempt to 
usurp one jot beyond the letter is to abrogate the 
whole contract, and on their heads be the conse- 
quences. We ask nothing but the Constitution 
as it is written; beyond that, self-preservation, 
the honest pride of independence, forbids us to 
move an inch. Do those who prate of universal 
benevolence know that nothing is so pernicious as 
to desert plain, explicit, and conventional rules for 
the wild dictates of this undefined and imprac- 
ticable pretension of empires and fanatics? To 
abandon a well-tried and practical union for the 
imaginary boon which the fanaticism of the day 
promises its dupes, is wild and wicked. It is the 
disease of prosperity. It is the besetting sin of 
man never to be satisfied with the actual blessings 
of Providence, when most bountifully bestowed. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 215 

'Jeshurum waxed fat and kicked.' This is the 
history of mortal gratitude, written of old time. 
To attempt to tear down any established govern- 
ment and build it up better has, in all ages, been 
a fearful experiment, and has seldom failed to call 
down upon those who attempted it the horrors of 
civil war, the tortures of the gibbet, the confla- 
grations of peaceful habitations, and ended in 
aggravating all the evils, real or imaginary, which 
led to the effort. Are we not at peace with the 
world, prosperous beyond every people on earth ? 
And yet fanaticism is busily lighting her torch, 
and demagogues are at work to take advantage of 
its baleful light to find their way to undeserved 
success. Look abroad upon other nations and 
we find even our unexampled success has proved 
no precedent for the oppressed of other nations. 
True, many a swelling heart has struggled to 
deliver the victims of despotism from their chains 
in vain. Their struggles have ended in despair. 
The blood of patriots has flowed in torrents, to no 
effect, and the chains of despotism have been 
strengthened again. The tree of liberty cannot 
be propagated by scions, however fresh from the 
parent-stalk, especiaUy if inoculated upon the 
corrupt stocks of feudal origin. But planted in 



2i6 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

our own virgin soil, it has spread its branches over 
a whole continent of freedom. True it is that the 
devoted Pilgrims who committed it to our native 
earth sheltered it for long years of its early growth 
by their manly fortitude and often moistened its 
roots with their tears and their blood. Let the 
traitors beware who would at this day attempt 
the unblessed task of blasting its foliage or laying 
the axe at its root. 

"All practical and successful government has 
been in some degree the growth of time, and 
has been accommodated to the peculiar want of 
those who framed it. A more theoretical per- 
fection has never yet characterized any known 
institutions of man. Can it be hoped that the 
dreams of enthusiasts, seconded by the heartless 
aspirations of demagogues, can ever frame a 
system better adapted to the American people 
than the one we now enjoy? We are at least 
under no obligations to hazard the experiment. 
The differing character of our population is itself 
the strongest reason for leaving the states uncon- 
trolled in their discipline and direction. No one 
can manage his neighbor's household as will he 
to whom it belongs. The attempt is unmitigated 
vanity and self-conceit, and its end is mischief. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 217 

It is a spirit that would lead us into crusades to 
liberate the serfs of Russia, to restore her nation- 
ality to Poland, to heal the wounds of bleeding 
Hungary, to avenge the centuries of wrongs which 
bear down the genius of Ireland; to succor the 
wretches who toil in dreary mines and waste away 
in the crowded factories of England, and even 
essay the act of gallantry in restoring the beautiful 
victims of Turkish grossness and open the well- 
guarded door of the harem; and, in the mean- 
time, the North and the South, the East and the 
West, would become diverted from their avoca- 
tions, and all our present greatness and internal 
prosperity would vanish like a fitful dream. It 
is madness to attempt these fancied feasts of uni- 
versal benevolence. It is impious to anticipate 
the dispensations of Providence. Our own coun- 
try, our own homes, our own institutions are com- 
mitted to the various departments of our own 
government; let each revolve in the sphere 
assigned to it under the Constitution, and leave 
the rest to Him who is alone wise to direct. 

"Our people are too wise not to comprehend 
and too accustomed to self-defense not to resist 
the first attempt to invade their rights. We feel 
no sympathy with the disorganizers. Free soil is 



2i8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

a palpable cheat; all soil is free to those who will 
purchase or cultivate it. The true secret is in 
the sympathy of those whose war cry is, 'Vote 
yourself a farm' — subterraneans, who only crawl 
out at elections and wish to get that for their 
votes which honest men are content to obtain 
by honest industry. We see them stripped for a 
fight at the polls, but never at the plough or with 
the axe, which, if fairly wielded, will soon cut 
them out a farm. This equivocal cry of free soU 
is the assembly that is to rally all that is vicious 
and indolent and reckless, and we must rely on 
the sober and industrious and moral to withdraw 
their countenance and withhold their countenance. 
They are incendiaries, and we are ready to arrest 
their career and protect ourselves. We want no 
change; we will not surrender what we hold under 
the title of the Revolution and the guaranty of 
the Constitution — and we hold all who shall dis- 
turb us as enemies, wherever they exist, and 
recreants to their race. 

"And now I conclude with this sentiment: 

"The Land We Live in: The home of our 

choice, not of accident. Here in our native land, 

liberated from colonial vassalage by the united 

efforts of our ancestors, we have fixed our habita- 




WILLIAM S. HASTIE 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 219 

tions and garnered up our hearts, secure in the 
sanctions of a common struggle for national inde- 
pendence and the guaranties of a Constitution 
formed by our fathers. We will preserve, pro- 
tect, and defend it with the same fidelity from 
foreign invaders or domestic traitors." 



VIEWS OF DR. OILMAN 

The next speaker is the Reverend Dr. Samuel 
Oilman, who was one of the most scholarly men in 
South Carolina at the time. This was also Dr. 
Oilman's last effort before the New England 
Society prior to his death in 1858. 

"The North and South Poles of Our Country: 
Heaven grant that the true equatorial line- be- 
tween them may be found right speedily. 

"I rise, Mr. President, not as a poUtician, but 
as a clergyman — an American — a man — to respond 
to the sentiment which you have just announced. 
The sentiment, I observe, sir, is couched in the 
form of a prayer, and may on that account be sup- 
posed to appeal somewhat to my professional 
sympathies and sensibilities. And truly, sir, long 
as I have been in the habit of addressing myself to 
the Supreme Disposer of the Universe, whether as 



220 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the public organ of a religious congregation or on 
my bended knees in the retirement of domestic 
privacy, never have I offered a petition to Heaven 
more deeply agonized with the inmost breathings 
of my heart than is my adoption of the words 
that have just fallen from your lips. With intense 
and painful anxiety have I watched the distrac- 
tions of our common, native country, and wit- 
nessed the gathering cloud that seems to threaten 
her destiny. But amidst all the gloom and 
alarm occasioned by the array of contending 
parties, I cannot permit myself to doubt that 
some happy solution will ' speedily ' be discovered 
for the difficulties that environ and perplex us. 

"Twice, Mr. President, since you and I have 
resided in this cordial and graceful old city of the 
South, have we seen the horizon as dark as it is 
now, and the elements of general convulsion appar- 
ently on the point of exploding. But by the 
benignant interposition of our God and our 
fathers' God, and the exercise of that felicitous 
good sense, self-restraint, and mutual forbearance 
which, 1 rejoice to believe, essentially belong to 
the American temperament and the American 
heart, we have seen our country's reeling bark 
dash through the enclosing storm-wave and, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 221 

righting itself, soon regain its accustomed track 
of steadfast and tranquil, though mighty, progress. 

"It is true that the stakes, issues, and questions 
of those days, momentous as they were, sink 
almost into insignificance when compared with 
the grander agitations of the present moment. 
It is true that the length and the breadth of this 
North American continent, the control of the 
Atlantic and Pacific shores, were not then, as 
they now are, involved in the controversies that 
shake and try our Constitution to its center. But, 
sir, may not the very grandeur and extent of the 
arena constitute on this occasion our safeguard, 
and may they not by a sort of blessed vis inertiae 
harmonize, sway, and reconcile the combatants, 
just as the central attraction of the great globe 
itself draws to one point and one poise the most 
variant tribes that move upon its surface ? 

"Yes, it is impossible that this Union can be 
dissolved — this Union which has begotten in the 
breasts of all its children a sentiment of mysterious 
and indestructible loyalty, that has astonished the 
world and baffled the calculations and extorted the 
convictions of the wondering minions of monarchy. 
All Europe has long been earnestly inquiring what 
is the meaning of that secret influence in our 



2 22 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

institutions that calls forth from the loftiest as well 
as the humblest of our citizens, although they may 
have been born thousands of miles apart and 
inhabit different climes, different zones, an en- 
lightened self-devotion and a prompt obedience 
to authority, which for beauty and power is not to 
be surpassed, not to be approached even, by the 
canine fidelity of the Russian serf to his emperor, 
nor by the frantic fanaticism of the oriental slave 
who bares his neck to the sword of a barbarian 
despot. 

"Yes, it is impossible that this Union can be 
permanently dissolved. Even if, in a moment of 
irritation and misunderstanding, a separation 
should be effected, depend upon it, as God is true, 
some method and principle of reunion would 
assuredly be contrived. Our common general 
origin, position, language, religion, history, forms 
of government, manners, civil laws, habitudes, 
interests, necessities, worn channels of intercourse 
— all the categories, in short, so perfectly set 
forth in Washington's Farewell Address — must 
crystallize us into a certain unity, whether poli- 
ticians will it or not, and notwithstanding some 
disparities in manners and institutions. The 
steamer, the railroad, and the telegraph only con- 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 223 

cur with and more and more necessitate the action 
of these moral causes. A division would be like 
dividing the waters with your hand, only to rush 
together again in their former channel. Like that 
parted husband and wife of whom we have all 
heard, we should find it intolerable to live asunder, 
and we should prefer enduring one another's 
imperfections, excitabilities, and idiosyncrasies to 
the dismal stagnation of existing on alone. There 
would, there must, be still some new combination, 
some new confederacy, with new conditions and 
guaranties, it may be, and so framed as to avoid 
the embarrassments of the past. And in sketch- 
ing out this result, I do but reiterate the voice of 
the past experience and history of our country. 
What is our present Constitution itself but an 
improvement wrought upon the old confederacy, 
such as events and necessities unavoidably 
developed? Can there be but one stage in our 
development ? If we have outgrown the existing 
Constitution — if parts of the system have become 
tight beyond endurance to either portion of the 
confederacy — is there no such thing as a new 
enlargement and accommodation of the enfolding 
garment ? 



224 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"But we will not look toward even this alter- 
native. We will hope for better things yet. We 
still see in our national councils those giant spirits 
who have piloted us in other days through stormy 
seas, and who have the hand and the heart to do 
it again. So long as Webster, the tyipe and genius 
of the East; Calhoun, the type and genius of the 
South; Clay, the type and genius of the West; 
and all three united, the type and genius of our 
Republic in its happiest phase — so long as these 
men have a consulting voice in our destiny, is 
there not a large margin for hope ? 

"Therefore, Mr. President, as I began these 
few remarks from your prayer as a starting point, 
so I am encouraged to close them with a prayer. 
It is that the Almighty would be pleased, of His 
infinite mercy, to visit this our land with the spirit 
of our own Washington, that he would enlighten, 
direct, unite, and bless our rulers and legislators, 
that he would carry to a successful termination 
the great experiment of self-government which 
He has thus far permitted to be here so auspi- 
ciously commenced; and that he would preserve 
and perpetuate our expanding union, so that by 
its powerful momentum the blessings of peace, 
virtue, good order, civil and religious liberty, pure 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 225 

and undefiled religion, may spread with their 
choicest influences throughout the world. 

"And now, sir, to make some transition from 
these solemn themes to the more genial festivities 
appropriate to this occasion, I offer as a sentiment: 

"Our distant and absent friends and brethren, 
members of this Society, together with the sons of 
the Pilgrims, wherever they are scattered over 
the land. Linked to them as we are by many a 
friendly and kindred tie, we recognize in this wel- 
come anniversary, next to the Union of the states, 
the strongest rivet to the chain." 

OTHER VIEWPOINTS 

At the annual celebration in 1859, two ad- 
dresses were delivered by members of the Society 
whose attitude was quite the antithesis of the two 
previous speakers. 

Dr. F. M. Robertson's response was as follows: 
"I have not been indifferent to the events and 
tendencies which have shown themselves during 
the past year. It is indeed a fundamental truth 
— as expressed in the sentiment from the com- 
mittee of arrangements — that the Constitution 
under which our Union exists is a compact 



226 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

founded upon mutual sympathy and good will 
between confederated states. Now I would ask 
you — I would ask this assemblage of the descend- 
ants and friends of the Pilgrim Fathers — does the 
same mutual sympathy and good will exist now 
that prompted the formation and adoption of that 
instrument? I am sure you will answer, no! If 
not, then, it is a melancholy fact that the Union, 
which it represents, is virtually abrogated. 

"I have long been an enthusiastic lover of the 
Union. Who, indeed, can deny that there is a 
romantic chain around Bunker Hill, Fort Moul- 
trie, Lexington, Camden, Princeton, Savannah, 
Monmouth, King's Mountain, Brandywine, York- 
town, Bridgewater, Lundy's Lane, New Orleans, 
and the daring deeds of our gallant navy that bore 
the Stars and Stripes triumphantly over the 
tempest-tossed ocean? But, in spite of all the 
hallowed associations, our safety demands that 
we should look facts in the face. The light of 
these glorious beacons which, come what may, 
will continue to burn with unextinguishable 
brightness but serves to show more plainly the 
indelible lines of alienation that are becoming 
deeper and wider every day. Yes, they have 
already been traced in blood. I must speak the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 227 

truth plainly, not in anger, but in sober earnest. 
I have been reluctantly forced to the conviction 
that slaveholding and non-slaveholding states 
cannot longer progress harmoniously under our 
present Union. The latter have too plainly and 
unmistakably declared that their form of civili- 
zation is radically, totally, and irreconcilably 
antagonistic to ours. This is the issue forced upon 
us. We must look it full in the face, meet it now, 
and decide it now. 

"If not out of order, I will make a professional 
comparison, which may not be an unapt illus- 
tration of our present condition. Our body politic 
is evidently very sick — ^very sick indeed. Now I 
propose, with your permission, making a sort of 
clinical examination of the patient, by which we 
shall better understand the case and the grounds 
of our diagnosis as well as prognosis. The human 
frame is said to be the perfection of mechanism. 
It is governed in all its beautiful and symmetrical 
movements by a set of nerves which spring from 
within the cavity of the cranium and spinal 
column. These are distributed to all the tissues, 
organs, and muscles. These impart vitality to 
every part. But, in order to insure harmony of 
action for the common good of all the organs. 



228 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

each of which, to a certain extent, is independent 
in the performance of locomotion, respiration, 
digestion, the circulation of the vital fluids and 
nutrition, there is another set of nerves having 
infinite ramification, and which unite with the 
former and are sent to all the organs to harmonize 
the action. This assemblage of nerves is most 
appropriately called the 'great sympathetic 
nerve.' When any part of the system becomes 
deranged, it is by the sympathetic action of this 
nerve that all the other organs feel the shock, and 
nature is aroused to a united and combined effort 
for the restoration of health. A destruction or 
disease of this sympathetic nerve leads to dis- 
orders that are fatal to the harmonious action of 
the system; disease, decay, convulsions, and 
death are often the results. 

"Upon this very principle is our Union 
founded. Each state is a separate and inde- 
pendent organ, acting for itself; but for the 
mutual protection and the common good all are 
united under the Constitution, the great sympa- 
thetic nerve of the Union. This is the seat of all 
our trouble. The functions of this great sympa- 
thetic nerve have become paralyzed in some of 
the organs of the body politic, and it no longer 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 229 

responds to that sympathetic action which is 
essential to health and harmony. If this derange- 
ment progresses, of which I have no doubt from 
present symptoms, political inflammation, con- 
gestion, gangrene, and a final sloughing off of this 
unhealthy portion will be the result. Then will 
there be, not only a virtual abrogation of the 
Union, but its inevitable destruction. 

"It will probably be said that I do injustice 
to a large portion of the people of the non- 
slaveholding states, who are conservatives. I 
wish I could be convinced that such is the case; 
no one would make a more ample and uncondi- 
tional apology than your unworthy speaker. I 
have many dear and warm personal friends in 
the non-slaveholding states whom I esteem and 
respect as highly as I do those around me. The 
descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, among whom 
are some of our best citizens, who are identified 
with us in sympathy and interest, who have 
become bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, 
require no eulogy or defense from me; we know 
them to be true to their adopted state; nor do 
I feel the slightest personal ill will toward those 
who do not think with me upon this great ques- 
tion. I would, tomorrow — yes, this very night 



230 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

— ^peril my own best interest to shield them from 
a lawless mob or illegal prosecution, believing, as 
I do, that they are the deluded victims of a 
strange hallucination. 

"I know I shall be pointed to the great con- 
servative meetings in Boston, New York, and 
Philadelphia. We have too often seen the shadow 
without the substance. We are taught, by high 
authority, to judge of the tree by its fruit. 'Do 
men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?' 
Such demonstrations only cost a little eloquence 
and a few huzzahs for the Union. These con- 
servative meetings, which appear to be a peri- 
odical spasmodic gasp in certain great cities, 
and perfectly impotent with the masses — they 
cannot resist the torrent. 'Let us hear from the 
ballot-box.' Without the substance, these demon- 
strations are but 'sounding brass and a tinkling 
cymbal.' The great mass of the people are anti- 
slavery, the majority anti-slavery and Black 
Republican, and a considerable portion out and 
out John Brown and Garrett Smith abolitionists, 
and all are tending to the same point. If you 
were to listen to the disputes of the doctors about 
yellow fever, you might conclude from the argu- 
ments of some that there was only now and then 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 231 

a genuine case of yellow fever to be found: they 
call some cases ephemeral fever, some break-bone 
fever, and some acclimation fever. But these are 
but different forms of the same disease: all are 
yellow fever. Just so with these anti-slavery 
men. Black Republicans and abolitionists — it is 
all the same disease. The only difference is that 
some have gone into the black vomit stage a little 
in advance of the others. The ultra-abolition 
ranks are filled up from the Black Republicans, 
and the Black Republican ranks are recruited 
from anti-slavery men. 

"It is a painful fact that, in spite of these 
repeated conservative meetings, the abolition 
sentiment and party have steadily gained ground 
from year to year until, through the ballot-box, in 
union with their allies, they now control almost 
every non-slaveholding state and have sent over 
one hundred Black Republicans to the national 
House of Representatives, more than sixty of 
whom have endorsed and contributed to the cir- 
culation of a book calculated to kindle a servile 
war in every slaveholding state. These are 
facts. Can such men legislate in that spirit of 
mutual sympathy and good will which gave birth 
to the Constitution? No, never! never! The 



232 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

vital spark has fled. They have virtually abro- 
gated the Union which it represents. 

"We have stood by the Constitution in every 
trial and are still ready to stand by it ; but if the 
people of the non-slaveholding states have deter- 
mined that their form of civilization cannot 
progress under the provisions of a compact which 
recognizes and protects us as slaveholders, and 
are ready to repudiate the Union, be it so. They 
will have a fearful problem to work out. Those 
who sow to the storm shall reap the whirlwind. 
We shall quietly organize as a Southern confed- 
eration, and with a firm reliance on the God of 
Nations provide new guards for our future safety, 
and 'hold them as we hold the rest of mankind 
— enemies in war; in peace, friends.' " 
Colonel James H. Taylor responded : 
"We have chosen our habitation with the 
people of the South. Here we have reared our 
families and erected our household gods. Our 
children, born and educated here, know no other 
home. Our dead are mingled with the dust 
beneath the magnolia and the pine, and all that 
we are and have is bound up in the welfare of the 
South. We look forward — a gloomy pall seems 
to be settling on our prospects and our hopes, the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 233 

bearers of which are our own Northern brethren 
and friends. It is impossible for us to disguise 
the fact that the sentiment of the Free States is 
hostile to our institutions. The leaders of some 
of the political parties of the North have an- 
nounced that an 'irrepressible conflict' between 
free and slave labor has already commenced; 
business relations are interrupted; social inter- 
course has become tinctured with bitter feeling; 
Christian charity has lost its power over the 
hearts of many who profess to be governed by 
religious principles, and the evidence before our 
eyes is clear and unmistakable that the doctrines 
which have been taught in the pulpit, from the 
rostrum, in Sabbath schools, and by the fireside 
— that slavery is a sin which should be removed 
from our land by every hazard— are now produ- 
cing their bitter fruit in lawless aggression, violence, 
and death. This state of things cannot endure. 
Will the conservative sentiment of the Free States 
be able to roll back the tide of wild fanaticism 
which finds its root in the conscience of a people ? 
Ne^oer, for the conservatism itself is rotten at the 
core. Not one, perhaps, of all those men who 
would thus sweep back the ocean of abolitionism 
with a broom but are conscientiously convinced 



234 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

that slavery in principle is wrong and that the 
institution is an evil. They do not — they can- 
not — stand on Southern ground in regard to first 
principles; and therefore their opposition to the 
whirlwind among them is looked upon with indif- 
ference, if not with contempt. Let us look back 
a little, and we find in 1832 the first lecturer — 
one Arnold Buffum, a Quaker — traveling over 
New England and presenting his doctrines wher- 
ever he could procure a place in which to speak. 
He found then no friend to his cause. In many 
instances he was publicly insulted, and nowhere 
was he favored or followed. Behold the change! 
AboHtionism has become aggressive. The pulpit 
and the press in too many cases are debauched 
to its support. Fanaticism has burst over all 
restraint and with headlong fury has dashed itself 
against the sovereignty of one of these states in 
the wild hope that there was no foundation 
beneath and that our social order and system 
would go down in wild confusion and destruction. 
Blood has been shed — that sacred thing hallowed 
in olden times as a sacrifice has been poured out; 
and, strangest of all, through the Free States 
come up on every side notes of sympathy. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 235 

"But I must pass on; enough has been said to 
indicate my opinions upon the nature and tend- 
encies of the principles that have brought about 
the present condition of things. BeHeving that 
an 'irrepressible conflict' has commenced and has 
almost reached its culmination, we must be pre- 
pared for the crisis, or I would rather say the 
results, of these contending forces. There are 
but two alternatives: the one to remain in the 
present Union, gradually yielding to the pressure 
that is upon Southern institutions until these 
shall be so crippled, confined, and smothered as 
to perish by atrophy, leaving the body politic 
without vigor or life; or, asserting our rights, 
assume the dignity of independent states, and 
then organize a government upon a principle 
that will recognize harmony in all conditions of 
labor and under all the arrangements of a wise, 
overruling Providence. 

"The first of these alternatives I will not dis- 
cuss. I do not believe there is a person present 
who wiU give his adherence to a course like that 
when he shall be convinced that justice and 
safety in this Union can no longer be expected. I 
invite your attention for a moment to the second 
alternative, intending to present a few reasons 



236 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

why we may look with hopefulness upon such a 
termination to our present conflict; and, in pass- 
ing, I desire to say one word in reference to the 
intimation which has been made more than once 
that if the Southern states attempt to organize a 
new republic, they shall be ' whipped ' back, or, as 
a member of Congress expresses it, a division of 
territory between free and slave states shall not 
take place, as eighteen millions are fully able to 
cope with eight millions. 

"Language like this is pitiful, it is contempt- 
ible. Neither section can afford to go to war on 
this subject; but certain it is, while the South will 
not attack the Free States to force her institutions 
upon them, all their combined power can never 
compel her to relinquish one iota of right or release 
one solitary slave. But the North, with all her 
wealth and population, can less afford to go to 
war than the South. Peace at home is of the 
first importance to a commercial and manufactur- 
ing people, and peaceful markets abroad are abso- 
lutely necessary to their prosperity. The dense 
population of the Northern states must be kept 
employed or the question of food for the pauper 
will ring in louder tones than ever. Granting 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 237 

that peace will follow the act of separation, we 
turn to our resources. It is unnecessary to com- 
ment upon the spirit and temper of eight millions 
of men whose ancestors are known in history and 
whose contemporaries have added new luster to 
Southern fame upon the battlefields of Florida 
and Mexico. Nor is it needful to speak of the 
four millions of slaves whose labor now clothes 
the world; but we come at once to the results of 
this labor and the power it exerts upon those who 
would dictate to us the terms upon which we are 
to employ it. The parody upon Carlyle's well- 
known proverb, 'Cotton is King,' is literally true, 
and that king has his throne in the South. Of 
the three hundred millions of dollars of exports 
last year, two hundred millions were of the South. 
What a power is here — a power that can influence 
exchange and finance, control importations, and 
collect tribute from every nation under heaven. 
Even the North, whose busy intermeddlers are 
even now pulling at the very king-post of the 
fabric of their own prosperity, this same North 
depends upon us for thirty-five millions of dollars 
of cotton each year, and for which for so long a 
time we have consented to receive in return the 



238 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

wares and goods of her own make. Stop this 
arrangement. As a Southern repubUc, a new 
order of things must exist. The new government 
must be conducted on economical principles and 
be supported by a direct tax upon the people. 
Our ports must be open in truth and fact to free 
trade. This secures the sympathy of England 
and Europe; our cotton goes with more prompt- 
ness because free trade gives an opportunity for 
an immense market for foreign productions and 
leaves our Northern neighbors the privilege of 
paying for their cotton in gold, instead of in the 
products of their mills and factories." 

THE ACTIONS OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 
FROM i860 TO 1865 INCLUSIVE 

The annual celebration on Forefathers' Day, 
December, i860, was not the usual elegant func- 
tion. The custom, which had prevailed for more 
than a generation, of having an oration was 
omitted. However, a number of short impromptu 
addresses were delivered. Two of these addresses 
were of more than casual interest. Hon. James 
B. Campbell responded to the toast ''The Day 
We Celebrate." His address dealt with the 
sterling characteristics of the Pilgrim Fathers. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 239 

He also prophesied the indissolubility of the 
Union. 

Mr. W. B. Carlisle responded to the toast, 
"The Press." Mr. Carlisle concluded his address 
by stating that as a native of South Carolina he 
desired to "render his acknowledgments and 
appreciation for the homage and affectionate 
allegiance that had been exhibited by adopted 
sons of South Carolina in the whole course of the 
New England Society and in the proceedings of 
the evening. 

"The great lesson of the day is, above and 
beyond all forms and details of government, in 
its sublime illustration and exemplification of the 
great truth that no sacrifice or privations are to 
be reckoned in comparison with self-government. 
Whatever of errors or evil has followed in the foot- 
prints of the Pilgrims or of their misguided 
descendants, this great lesson is essentially and 
eternally American, and knows no section or 
chmate. 

"We may differ in our application of it to 
details and particular cases and sectional interests, 
but we have not forgotten it, even at this distance, 
in time and place, from the great event com- 
memorated on the 2 2d of December. A late event 



240 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

in South Carolina would mark the 20th of Decem- 
ber with a significance destined to grow in impor- 
tance at each recurrence. It could not be expected 
that any great state movement would be effected 
without an actor representing New England. In 
the list of signatures affixed with determined and 
deliberate purpose to the Ordinance of Secession 
of the 20th of December, i860, there was an 
honored name of a noble son of New England. It 
was a grateful privilege to recall to the attention 
of the New England Society that this name was 
that of their annual orator. Chancellor B. F. 
Dunkin, the faithful citizen, pure patriot, and 
upright magistrate." 

The governor and the lieutenant-governor of 
South Carolina sent their regrets: 

"The Governor presents his best respects to 
the New England Society and regrets that 
important business occupying his attention pre- 
vents his acceptance of their polite invitation for 
tomorrow evening. The Governor is pleased at 
the demonstration of fidelity contained in their 
note. Of this patriotic avowal the Governor has 
no doubt." 

The lieutenant-governor wrote: 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 241 

"I have the honor to acknowledge your 
flattering invitation to be present with you this 
evening at your anniversary celebration, and 
regret that a previous engagement will preclude 
me from enjoying that pleasure. Permit me to 
offer you the following sentiment : 

"The New England Society of Charleston: 
True to the instincts of their noble ancestors, they 
know the rights of their inheritance, and will ever 
fearlessly maintain them." 

The mayor of the city was present, and 
felicitated the members. 

In 1 86 1 the members of the New England 
Society held their annual meeting in December, 
and at the suggestion of Hon. James B. Campbell 
dispensed with the annual dinner, donating the 
sum of one thousand dollars to hospitals in 
Charleston for the benefit of sick and wounded 
soldiers. 

In 1862 the Society held a number of meetings. 
At a meeting held January 21, 1862, a donation of 
one hundred dollars was made to the Ladies' 
Benevolent Society, one of the principal charitable 
organizations of Charleston. This was the last 
meeting at which the venerable president, Mr. 
A. S. Willington, presided. 



242 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

The Society met again March 25, 1862. At 
this meeting, Otis Mills was elected president and 
a committee was appointed to draft appropriate 
resolutions upon the death of the president of the 
Society, which occurred February 10, 1862. 

In a brochure published by the New England 
Society in 1885, it is stated that "no meetings 
of the Society were held during this interval, 
March 25, 1862 — December 22, 1865." This 
statement is incorrect. 

The annual meeting was held in December, 
1862. Resolutions were adopted commemorating 
the noble life and exalted character of A. S. Wil- 
lington, who had served the Society for fifteen 
years as president. A number of donations were 
made to war benevolences and to other charities 
of the city. 

In 1863 a number of meetings were held. 
January 31, 1863, a regular monthly meeting was 
held, at which Mrs. A. S. Willington, widow of the 
late president of the Society, was elected a life- 
member. Mrs. Willington joined the Society in 
order to assist in the noble works of charity 
which the Society was doing at the time. Mrs, 
Willington was the only woman ever elected to 
membership in the New England Society of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 243 

Charleston. The annual meeting was held in 
December, 1863, at which routine business was 
transacted, officers elected, and the total income 
of the Society donated to charity. 

In 1864, the darkest period of the War, no 
regular meetings of the Society were held, but it 
is of interest to note that the committee on 
charity continued the benevolent work of the 
Society. Not only did the New England Society 
fail to meet in regular session in 1864, but also a 
number of the other fraternal organizations of the 
city were unable to hold meetings on account of 
perilous conditions. 

In 1865 the following advertisement appeared 
in the Charleston Daily Courier of December 22: 
"The members of the New England Society are 
requested to meet this evening at the Mills House, 
at six o'clock." The annual dinner was again 
omitted and the income of the Society for the 
year was distributed among the worthy charities 
of the community. 

At the close of the War, the Society was 
strong and active. It is a significant fact that 
not a single member resigned during the war 
period. On its membership roll were the names 
of many of the most prominent men of the city, 



244 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

such as: Messrs. Robertson, Williams, Tucker, 
Johnson, Lebby, Tupper, Webb, Hastie, Hayden, 
Robinson, Pope, Campbell, Read, Street, Locke, 
Rowland, Richards, Earle, Taylor, Brewster, 
Mills, Dunkin, and others of equal standing in 
the community. 

It is a well-known fact that the New England 
Society during this period of stress and blood 
maintained its high standing in membership and 
in good works. The reason the Society lived 
and prospered during the trying five years of war 
was on account of its stainless record for more 
than forty years, and especially for the reason 
that the individual members of the Society were 
men of high and noble character, in whom the 
community had absolute trust and confidence. 

Professor F. C. Woodward, of the South 
Carolina College, delivered an address before the 
Society at its annual celebration in 1895, in which 
he interpreted the true spirit of the old city. He 
said in part : 

"If my tongue were touched with poetic fire, 
I might seek to emulate Wordsworth's praise 
of Yarrow in a trilogy upon Charleston unvisited, 
Charleston visited, and Charleston revisited. But 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 245 

though it is not poetry, it is truth that to this visi- 
tor Charleston unvisited was a joyous anticipation; 
visited, a happy realization; revisited, a climac- 
teric consummation. 'See Rome and die!' See 
Charleston and live ! 

"When, some years ago, I first heard of the 
New England Society of Charleston, I was struck 
with the apparent contradiction of the terms of 
that title. It suggested such paradoxes as the 
polar bears of the Sahara, tobogganing on the 
Equator, wooden nutmegs growing on the Pal- 
metto, a school of codfish storming the Battery. 
But this superficial fancy soon gave place to the 
conclusion that this title was a pregnant epigram, 
good fellowship that knows no prejudices, a 
national solidarity that ignores all sectionalism. 
So I take it and hail the omen. Does it not 
mean, this leaning of the Pine to the Palmetto, 
that there is room in their hearts for their Southern 
fellow-citizens and welcome at our hearts for our 
Down-East brethren ? 

"There should be a twin fraternity: the New 
England Society of Charleston and the South 
Carolina Society of Boston; that while we are 
swapping turpentine for tin pans and cotton for 



246 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

calico, we may make generous interchange of 
Southern state pride and genial hospitality for 
Northern thrift and national patriotism." 

THE CONDUCT OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY AND 

OF ITS MEMBERS DURING THE TRYING PERIOD 

OF RECONSTRUCTION 

The contribution in terms of service and influ- 
ence rendered by the New Englanders in Charles- 
ton more than justified the confidence in which 
they had been held for half a century in South 
Carolina. It will suffice to mention a few out- 
standing instances of the loyalty and constructive 
activity of the men who represented New Eng- 
land traditions. 

In 1866 the Society celebrated its forty-eighth 
anniversary. Its president, Otis Mills, had sold 
practically his whole estate, consisting of the very 
best realty in Charleston, and invested it in Con- 
federate bonds in order to assist the Confederacy. 
The investment was a total loss. James B. 
Campbell, the vice-president of the Society, had 
been elected United States senator by the legisla- 
ture of South Carolina. Both of these patriotic 
citizens were born in Massachusetts. Benjamin 
F. Dunkin, a New Englander, was chief justice of 
South Carolina. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 247 

At this meeting, almost the entire income of 
the Society was donated for the assistance and 
comfort of Confederate soldiers in the city of 
Charleston. Ten representative men, a number 
of whom had served in the Confederate Army, 
joined the Society. During the years immediately 
following the Civil War, the membership became 
larger and the finances of the Society became 
more prosperous than at any time previously. 
These facts emphasize the high esteem in which 
the Society was held in the community. 

In 1875 there came a crisis in South Carolina. 
D. H. Chamberlain, a New Englander and a mem- 
ber of the New England Society of Charleston, 
was governor of the state at the time. The 
judiciary, which ex-President Taft has defined as 
"the bulwark of our civilization," was threatened. 
The General Assembly of the state elected to the 
office of circuit judge W. J. Whipper and F. J. 
Moses, Jr. Governor Chamberlain refused to grant 
commissions to these men. There were two 
reasons why the Governor refused; the first was 
legal, the second was moral. 

The state constitution provided that "for each 
circuit a judge shall be elected by the General 
Assembly, who shall hold his office for a term of 



248 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

four years." On January 18, 1872, F. J. Graham 
was elected judge of the first circuit, and John T. 
Green was elected judge of the third circuit. 
Their terms began in August of that year and, 
under the constitution, ended in August, 1876. 
Both Judge Green and Judge Graham died in 
office. In December, 1874, Colonel J. P. Reed 
was elected for the unexpired term of Judge 
Graham, and in January, 1875, Mr. Shaw was 
elected for the unexpired term of Judge Green. 
The present General Assembly, assuming that 
the terms of office of Judges Reed and Shaw 
expired in August, 1876, when the terms of 
Judges Graham and Green, had they lived, 
would have expired, proceeded to elect W. J. 
Wliipper as judge of the first circuit and F. J. 
Moses, Jr., as judge of the third circuit. This 
action was held to be in direct conflict with the 
constitution, which fixes the term of office of cir- 
cuit judge at four years, so that the terms of 
Judges Reed and Shaw did not expire until 1878. 
Another General Assembly would be elected the 
next November, and would be in session in 1876- 
77, and 1877-78. That General Assembly, and no 
preceding General Assembly, could elect judges of 
the first and third circuits, and the act of the 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 249 

present General Assembly in assuming to elect 
Whipper and Moses was absolutely void. The 
General Assembly in so assuming to elect rested 
on the admitted fact that Judges Reed and Shaw 
were elected for an unexpired term only; but by 
a long series of adjudicated cases in this state 
before and since the War it was decided that a 
judge, once in office, no matter how or upon what 
condition, was in for the constitutional term, 
which in the present case was four years. 

The News and Courier of December 22, 1875, 
made the following comment on the Governor's 
action: 

"True to himself, to his honest purposes, and, 
above all, to the people of South Carolina, Gover- 
nor Chamberlain has flatly and decisively declined 
to issue commissions to W. J. Whipper and F. J, 
Moses, Jr., who claim to have been elected judges 
of the circuit court of this state. This action was 
foreshadowed when Governor Chamberlain de- 
clared that neither Whipper nor Moses had 'any 
qualities which approached to a qualification for 
judicial positions'; that Whipper is incapable and 
unfit, and Moses is crusted over with charges of 
' corruption, bribery, and the utter prostitution of 
his official powers to the worst possible uses. ' And 



250 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

it is the proper and natural consequence of the 
position taken by Governor Chamberlain a year 
ago when he declared that Whipper had not the 
ability, the legal learning, or the integrity to fit 
him for the position he sought. 

"It is true that Governor Chamberlain bases 
his refusal to issue the commissions to Whipper 
and Moses upon the ground that the present 
General Assembly had not the right to elect them, 
for the reason that the terms of the present in- 
cumbents. Judges Reed and Shaw, do not expire 
until after the next general election. But it is 
evident that Governor Chamberlain, under other 
circumstances, would not have felt that he was 
justified in declining to commission persons 
whom the General Assembly had, whether right- 
fully or wrongfully, elected. In his own brave 
words, 'while in some cases presenting similar 
legal questions it might not be required of the 
Governor to decline commissions, the circum- 
stances of the present case compel me to this course .^ 
Before him came two persons, who demanded 
that the governor of South Carolina officially 
recognize them as the ministers and expounders of 
that justice whose seat is the bosom of God. One 
of these persons is known to be a gambler, known 




CHARLES S. VEDDER 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 251 

to be illiterate, and believed to be a thief; and the 
other is known to be a debauchee, a bribe-taker, 
and shameless plunderer of the pubUc. The 
people were threatened with the greatest calamity 
that has befallen any Southern state since the 
War. In this extremity, an extreme step was 
necessary. Governor Chamberlain has taken that 
step, and in taking it he has proved, as no other 
act could have proved, that no consideration of 
seK or of party can move him a hair's breadth 
when the safety and peace of the whole people is 
in peril. The persons whom he was asked to 
commission are of the same poHtical party with 
himself. It is certain that the scoundrels who 
elected them will pour out on the executive the 
vials of their wrath. Governor Chamberlain 
stands at bay, while the Radical hounds howl 
around him. He stands upon the Right. His 
sole guide is his public duty. And whoever else 
may be against him, the true people of the state, 
whose champion he is in the hour of their sorest 
need, will stand by him to the end. 

"Think, for a moment, of the complexion given 
to the election of Moses and Whipper by that 
refusal to sign their commissions, which has been 
read with grateful satisfaction this morning in 



252 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

evety state of the Union ! It is no longer possible 
to say that these two persons are stigmatized 
because of their pohtics or class; it is no longer 
possible to declare that the opposition to them is 
only the expression of Democratic hatred of 
ever>^thing that is done by Republicans. Gover- 
nor Chamberlain is a New Englander, a soldier of 
the Union, a RepubUcan from his youth up. 
Upon his loyalty to the Union and the Repubhcan 
cause there is no stain. President Grant declares 
him to be the best governor in the South. And 
this Repubhcan of the strictest sect, this Massa- 
chusetts governor of South Carohna, is com- 
pelled to cast away from him this WTiipper and 
this Moses as things so infamous and unclean 
that they cannot and must not stand before the 
American people as having any recognition what- 
soever, save that which is found in their election 
by persons of their own character and calling. 
This will make the horrid story plain to every 
American citizen. By the first bold blow, the 
fight is hah won ! 

"Governor Chamberlain has done for the 
people of South Carohna what no other h\ing 
man could have done. Great was his oppor- 
tunity, and splendid is the use he has made of it. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 253 

To him thanks eternal for interposing the shield 
of the executive authority between the chieftains 
of the robber band in Columbia and the people of 
the low country of South Carolina. But there is 
work now for the good people of South Carolina 
to do. Governor Chamberlain must be sustained 
and promptly, in what he has done. It must be 
made manifest, and quickly, that the heart of 
South Carolina is touched, and this assurance 
can only be given by mass meetings in every 
county in the state. Let Charleston begin the 
work! Tomorrow night, at latest, there should 
be an outpouring of the people of Charleston in 
vindication and approval of the conduct of 
Governor Chamberlain, and to express the unfal- 
tering and immovable determination that the 
men whom the General Assembly had the audacity 
to elect, and whom a Republican governor has 
refused to commission, shall never administer 
so-called justice in the courts of South Caro- 
lina." 

A great mass meeting was held in Charleston, 
December 29, 1875. The president of the meeting 
was George W. Williams, a member of the New 
England Society. Four of the vice-presidents of 
the meeting were also prominent members of the 



254 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Society. In calling the meeting to order, Colonel 
B. H. Rutledge said: 

"We are in the midst of a great crisis in our 
affairs. We have the safety of our property and 
our liberties and, it may be, our lives at stake. A 
blow has been aimed directly at the very center of 
our civilization. Our honor has been trampled 
into the very dust. Under these circumstances, 
it becomes us to consult together, and further to 
promulgate the result of our deliberations calmly, 
seriously, earnestly, resolutely. It is for this 
purpose that we are met here tonight, and it is 
proposed that this meeting organize immediately 
without further preliminaries under the following 
officers, taken from the most respectable, the 
most influential, and the most responsible of our 
fellow-citizens." 

After the meeting was organized. General 
James Conner, one of the most distinguished 
citizens of the state, delivered the following 
address : 

"I had hoped never again to make a political 
speech. It is foreign to my disposition and pur- 
suits; but there are occasions when private incli- 
nation must yield to public duty, when every 
citizen must consider the state first, and himself 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 255 

last ; and this, in my judgment, is such an occasion. 
We are brought by recent events face to face with 
great issues. I am old enough to remember many 
eventful periods in the history of this state; but I 
can recall not one more momentous than the 
present. 

"The question is not how you can live here; 
but whether you can live here at all. You have 
either to redeem the state or quit it. You must 
make a good government or they will make a 
Hayti. For one, I claim a heritage in the state, 
and I will not be driven from it! Since 1868 the 
Republican party has ruled the state; no such 
government has ever shocked the civilized world. 
No people has ever endured so much, so patiently, 
and so long. We have sought relief through con- 
ciliation and compromise; and I do not condemn 
it. I say it was well; for had it not been tried, 
there are those who would have said that it was 
the true remedy and sole panacea for all this. 
We have tried it and demonstrated by failure its 
utter inadequacy. 

"When Governor Chamberlain stumped the 
state in the canvass for governor, he pledged him- 
self to reform and to lift from the Republican 
party of the nation and the state the odium and 



256 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

reproach of South Carohna poHtics. His party 
cheered him to the echo, and held him forth as 
their champion. But no sooner does he attempt 
to maintain his pledged faith and lift his party 
from the slough of corruption than they repudiate 
his counsels, defeat his plans, and crown their 
infamy by a degradation greater than any ever 
yet imposed. The election of Moses and Whipper 
was the legislative answer to his efforts to reform 
the party from within. 

"All that now stands between us and the 
degradation of the bench is the wise and bold 
action of the Governor. He stands erect, bearing 
the wrath of his own party, to maintain unbroken 
his promise of reform. As he is true to his duty, 
let us be true to ours and stand firmly and unitedly 
by him in support of the right. It is the path of 
duty; it is the path of wisdom and safety." 

The following preamble and resolutions were 
unanimously adopted by the meeting: 

"We are assembled to confer upon a condition 
of affairs as grave as ever imperiled the peace and 
well-being of any community. The foundation 
of society is a pure judiciary, and its corruption 
or perversion to evil purposes destroys the last 
hope of securing to a people protection and liberty. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 257 

"The action of the legislature in electing as 
judges W. J. WTiipper and F. J. Moses, Jr., men 
whose proper place in a courthouse is the criminal's 
dock, is an insult to evety honest citizen, and a 
\dolation of every safeguard which the law affords 
to life, hberty, and property. 

"But this action is not in itself the full measure 
of the evil that confronts us. Bad as it is, its 
graver aspect is in what it signifies. We recognize 
in the recent judicial elections the ascendency and 
control of the worst element of the political party 
which governs the state. Actuated by a relentless 
hate based upon race, and stimulated by the pros- 
pect of 'plunder and revenge,' they have repudi- 
ated all restramt and inaugurated a poHcy which 
inevitably leads to the destruction of decent 
government, ruins the material interests of the 
state, and imperils our very ci\alization. Under 
such a condition of things, law ceases to protect 
and government itseK becomes the oppressor. 

"What shall we do to avert the destruction 
which must surely result from the consummation 
of the policy thus inaugurated ? 

"Since 1868 the conservative citizens of this 
state have put aside party obligations and the 
hopes of party ascendency, have put no party 



2s8 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

ticket in the field, but have sought and hoped for 
peace stabihty and pure government through the 
Repubhcan party. They have striven not to 
antagonize but to harmonize conflicting races, 
interests, and opinions, patiently waiting to 
obtain as the fruits of their forbearances the 
blessings of good government. 

"In every form in which the effort could be 
made, it has been tried, and when, through the 
wise, firm, and patriotic administration of Gover- 
nor Chamberlain, the end seemed about to be 
obtained, a Repubhcan Assembly impatiently 
resents his control, and with a recklessness born 
of ignorance and hate commits the state to a 
career destructive of its peace and fatal to its 
prosperity. The failure to obtain relief through 
the agency of the Republican party of the state 
is utter and hopeless. The responsibilities and 
obligations imposed upon us in this emergency 
must be fearlessly met. 

"It is our first duty, as citizens to whom the 
character and future of the state are dear, earn- 
estly and solemnly to protest against the action of 
those who not only have brought reproach upon 
their own party, but have endangered the very 
foundations of our social fabric; and to use every 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 259 

means to wrest from them the power which they 
have so wantonly abused. 

''We deprecate all appeal to passion and 
prejudice, but it behooves us to speak plainly. 
The attempt to place infamy and corruption in 
the seat of justice violates the primal instincts of 
civilized humanity, and to that we will not sub- 
mit. The right to justice and good government 
is one which we dare not relinquish. 

"With no hostility to the colored people of the 
state, mindful of the good conduct of those who 
have not been misled by evil counsels, we are 
determined to preserve to them every right and 
privilege guaranteed by the Constitution and laws 
of the country; but the avowed purpose that 
there shall not be equality but a domination of 
their race over the property and rights of the 
white people of the state will be resisted to 
the last; and under no circumstances shall it 
prevail. 

"We appeal to the honest and intelligent por- 
tion of them who bear their share of the political 
shame, but share no part of the political plunder, 
while there is yet time to turn away from the evil 
counsels which are leading them to a contest which 
must end in utter ruin. 



26o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

"We raise no political issue. 'The issue rises 
higher than the party/ and seeks the end for which 
parties are organized. 

"We recognize the earnestness and fidelity 
with which a portion of the Republican party 
under the leadership of Governor Chamberlain 
has striven to establish a government which 
respects the rights and protects the interests of all 
the people of the state. But they have failed. 
The worst elements of their party have defeated 
them. With confidence in their sincerity, we ask 
them to continue their efforts and, without the 
abandonment of political principles, to aid us in 
the attainment of a common end and the estab- 
lishment of a pure and honest government. Be 
it therefore 

^^ Resolved, That as citizens of this state we 
protest against the action of the General Assembly 
in electing as judges men so notoriously corrupt 
as W. J. Whipper and F. J. Moses, Jr., and avow 
our determination to resist it to the end. 

^^ Resolved, That we protest against the con- 
tinuance in office of legislators so regardless of 
duty and so reckless of the character, the peace, 
and the prosperity of the state, and we will use 
every effort to drive them from power. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 261 

^^ Resolved, That we cordially endorse the 
action of Governor Chamberlain in refusing to 
issue commissions as judges to W. J. Whipper and 
F. J. Moses, Jr., and pledge to him the full sup- 
port of this community in his efforts to secure to 
the people of the state a faithful administration 
of the law. 

'^Resolved, That we tender to Governor Cham- 
berlain our grateful thanks for the bold and states- 
manlike struggle he has made in the cause of 
reform, in the economical administration of the 
government, in the preservation of the public 
faith, in the equal administration of justice, and 
in the maintainance of the public peace, and we 
pledge him our cordial support for the accom- 
phshment of these ends." 

The manly and patriotic action of Governor 
Chamberlain elicited commendatory comment 
from the leading newspapers of the entire country. 
A limited number are herewith quoted : 

The New York Herald 

Governor Chamberlain of South Carolina seems to be 
doing effective work in opposing the corruptionists of 
that state, both in and out of the legislature. 



262 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

The Boston Advertiser 

Many eloquent speeches were made at the banquets 
in various cities Friday night, but to our way of thinking 
the most eloquent by long odds was that dispatch of a 
dozen lines sent by telegraph from Columbia to Charleston 
by the governor of South Carolina: " If there was ever an 
hour when the spirit of the Puritans — the spirit of undy- 
ing, unconquerable enmity and defiance to wrong — ought 
to animate their sons, it is this hour, here, in South 
Carolina." That was spoken like a son of Massachusetts 
filled with the grand courage of her early days. Unless 
we underrate the magnanimity of the descendants of the 
Huguenots in South Carolina, they will stand by this 
descendant of the Puritans who, by force of circum- 
stances, is fighting their battle against the deluded and 
enraged hosts of ignorance. To all appearances, this is 
the crisis of affairs in that state, and whether honor and 
righteousness triumph depends for the time on the cour- 
age of one man, who, in allegiance to his convictions of the 
supreme importance in a republic of an upright judiciary, 
has defied the organized corruption of the state. There 
is not at the present moment in the whole country a more 
splendid exhibition of Puritan character. 

The Boston Globe 

Then came the question whether it was to be a possi- 
bility to regenerate the state through a regeneration of 
the Republican party. Governor Chamberlain and his 
supporters gave their most zealous efforts to measures of 
reform, and there was hope of a dawn of light upon the 
dark prospects of that much-tried commonwealth. But 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 263 

there were the same elements there as before — ignorance 
and irresponsibility under the guidance of rascality — and 
they have been working against the administration. It 
seems that in the election of the present legislature they 
prevailed, and there are threats of a dire eclipse of the 
brightening prospects of the state. The election of 
ex-Governor Moses, Mr. Whipper, a colored man, who 
has proven himself an unscrupulous leader among his own 
people, and Mr. Wiggins, whom a Charleston paper 
characterizes as "a drunken ignoramus," to the bench of 
the Circuit Court shows that the forces of corruption are 
again in the ascendant. In seconding the nomination of 
Mr. Whipper, Mr. Elliott, Speaker of the House, and a 
powerful leader of the black politicians, declared that he 
would "measure the republicanism of the members by 
their votes on that occasion." Republicanism in South 
CaroHna seems to mean submission to these corrupt and 
reckless leaders. Governor Chamberlain, in a recent 
interview, admitted that the effect of the election of 
these would be to reorganize the Democratic party in 
the state, and that it would embrace the "good and 
honest men of South Carolina." 

Of course, the state of things in South Carolina has 
nothing to do with the general principles or merits of the 
pohtical parties of the nation. Where political power is 
lodged with an ignorant population, unfitted for its 
exercise, the unscrupulous are almost certain to obtain 
control, and the circumstances and experience of the 
colored race in this country made it necessary for these 
leaders to be Republicans in order to gain their ends. It 
is a question whether it is possible for the intelligence, 
the honesty, and the conscience of the state to rule 



264 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

through either party, so long as the franchise is in the 
hands of this ignorant mass. If not, that state has got 
the tribulation of misgovernment to go through, until its 
colored population is educated up to a better compre- 
hension and a higher sense of their duties and responsi- 
bilities as citizens, or in some measure deprived of them. 
Meantime, there are evidences that the Conservatives 
will reorganize and draw into their ranks most of the 
"good and honest men," and they ought to have the 
help of the public opinion of the rest of the country in 
their efforts to wrest the state from the hands of its 
plunderers. 

The Chicago Tribune 

Governor Chamberlain, of South Carolina, has again 
struck a vigorous blow for reform. The legislature of 
that state lately elected some notorious scamps as circuit 
judges — Whipper and ex-Governor Moses among them. 
The governor has refused to issue commissions to these 
two, basing his refusal on some legal technicality. It is 
hoped that this will save the state judiciary from the 
utter degradation prepared for it by the legislature. The 
corrupt judges were elected by a combination of all the 
bad element in the state. We rejoice that Governor 
Chamberlain has done all in his power to prevent the 
consummation of the bargain. He deserves credit for 
standing so well by his recent record of honesty and 
intelligence. 

The Boston Globe 

Governor Chamberlain has refused to sign the com- 
mission of Mr. W. J. Whipper and Mr. Franklin J. Moses, 
Jr., as circuit judges, on the ground that the legislature 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 265 

had no right to elect them, as the term of office of the 
present incumbents does not expire until after the next 
legislature is chosen. The ground is a purely technical 
one, but it is a good thing if any ground can be found for 
keeping these graceless political bummers off the bench. 
There is hope that the next legislature may have more 
sense. 

The Louisville Courier- Journal 

This action on the part of Chamberlain is promising, 
as it gives some hope that South Carolina, the stronghold 
of the black and white carpet-baggers, will yet be blessed 
with an honest government. The character of these men, 
Whipper and Moses, is despicable beyond expression. It 
is encouraging to know that Governor Chamberlain has 
determined to abate their recent triumph and free the 
judiciary from such disgrace. 

Governor Chamberlain was invited to deliver 
the oration at the annual celebration of the New 
England Society in 1875. He was unable to 
attend, but sent the following telegram: 

Columbia, S.C, December 22, 1875 
To the New England Society, Charleston, S.C: 

I cannot attend your annual supper tonight, but if 
there ever was an hour when the spirit of the Puritans — 
the spirit of undying, unconquerable enmity and defiance 
to wrong— ought to animate their sons, it is this hour, 
here, in South Carolina. 

The civilization of the Puritan and the Cavalier, the 
Roundhead and the Huguenot, is in peril. Courage, 



266 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Determination, Union, Victory must be our watchwords. 
The grim Pmritans never quailed under threat or blow. 
Let their sons now imitate their example ! 
God bless the New England Society. 

D. H. Chamberlain 

In 1878 the New England Society of Charles- 
ton and the New England Society of New York 
exchanged greetings : 

The New England Society of Charleston, South 
Carolina, to the New England Society of New York, 
greeting: 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the 
nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among 
ourselves and with all nations. 

The New England Society of New York to 
the New England Society of Charleston, South 
Carolina: 

We acknowledge cordially your greeting, and we 
hope to emulate you in a sincere desire to discharge our 
duties as God gives us light to see them. 

From a careful survey of the facts in the case, 
it may be justly concluded that the New England 
Society of Charleston as an organization and as 
individuals followed the pathway of duty, as 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 267 

they saw the right, during the years immediately 
preceding the War, during the period of the War, 
and during the problematical epoch of recon- 
struction following the War. 

Before the War, the majority of the New 
Englanders in Charleston did everything in their 
power to prevent the conflict. During the War, 
they exerted every effort to alleviate the suffering, 
pain, and need. After the War, they devoted 
their ability, their influence, and their energy to 
bind up and soothe the wounds, to mitigate 
hatred, to promote honest government, and to 
cement the nation into a real Union. 



268 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



FAMOUS DINNERS 

When Daniel Webster visited Charleston in 
the spring of 1847, he referred to the " City by the 
Sea" as "the long-renowned and hospitable city 
of the South." For more than a century Charles- 
ton has been famous for her charming hospitality. 
No other city in the South has attained such an 
enviable reputation in the graceful art of enter- 
taining. It is not too much to say that among 
the many functions of a similar character for 
one hundred years in the city of Charleston, the 
annual dinners of the New England Society have, 
by common consent, been accorded prandial and 
post-prandial pre-eminence. 

The New England Society was the first 
organization of the kind in South Carolina to 
co-ordinate the two ideal features of a banquet — 
the convivial and the educational. The idea 
came from New England, the home of education 
in America. When the Society was organized, it 
was resolved that the annual celebrations should 
be for good instruction and good fellowship. 
This custom has become law in the Society's life. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 269 

Other fraternal and patriotic organizations in 
Charleston have emulated the good example. 
More than four hundred men of ability and char- 
acter have delivered addresses before the New 
England Society of Charleston on Forefathers' 
Day. The following names are selected from 
that number: Daniel Webster, Judge B. F. Dun- 
kin, Colonel B. F. Hunt, Martin Luther Hurlbut, 
William Crafts, Jr., James L. Petigru, Professor 
John E. Holbrook, Reverend Samuel Oilman, 
D.D., Professor Charles Upham Shepard, Rever- 
end William Coombs Dana, D.D., Charles R. 
Brewster, James B, Campbell, Reverend Charles 
S. Vedder, D.D., Melville E. Stone, WiUiam 
Everett, Josiah Quincy, George F. Hoar, Charles 
F. Adams, Justice David J. Brewer, Professor 
Basil L. Oildersleeve, Oovernor David H. Cham- 
berlain, Henry Bailey, Colonel J. H. Taylor, 
Dr. F. M. Robertson, John Temple Graves, 
Oovernor Locke Craig, O. Duncan Bellinger, the 
Right Reverend C. E. Woodcock, D.D., the Right 
Reverend Wm. A. Guerry, D.D., Oovernor W. H. 
Mann, Dr. S. C. MitcheU, Dr. W. S. CurreU, 
Judge F. D. Winston, F. R. Lassiter, Reverend 
Paul Revere Frothingham, D.D., Reverend C. B. 
Wilmer, D.D., E. J. Hill, Patrick Calhoun, Judge 



270 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

W. H. Brawley, George S. Legare, Professor Frank 
C. Woodward, Judge G. W. Gage, Joseph W. 
Barnwell, Joseph C. Gumming, W. H. McElroy, 
the Very Reverend J. Wilmer Gresham, D.D., 
Dr. J. A. B. Scherer, J. B. Townsend, Judge C. H. 
Simonton, Reverend W. W. Memminger, J. P. K. 
Bryan, W. C. Miller, John Bennett, Dr. Harrison 
Randolph, P. A. Willcox, R. Goodwyn Rhett, 
John F. Ficken, George F. Von Kolnitz, Huger 
Sinkler, Henry Buist, J. C. HemphiU, T. R. War- 
ing, P. H. Whaley, Jr., and J. E. Hessin. 

The following excerpts from the press and 
the two menus selected at random will give an idea 
of the excellence of the annual celebrations from 
the standpoint of gastronomic art and of general 
excellence: 

"Of all the handsome banquets and enter- 
tainments given in the city of Charleston during 
the year, the annual dinner of the New England 
Society is by common consent awarded the palm 
for brilliancy and elegance. The prestige which 
the dinner has attained is not a local one merely, 
for wherever the Society exists and spreads its 
damask, the fame of the deliciousness of its 
viands, the brilliancy of the company of guests 
which it collects together, and the excellency of 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 271 

the wit and oratory which it calls forth, are 
proverbial. 

"The guests whom the Society bids to its feasts 
are selected from the nation's greatest men, with- 
out regard to local political prejudices or geo- 
graphical limitations. When the invitations are 
sent out — ^invitations coveted by everyone — they 
go to all quarters of the country. Any son of the 
country who has honorably won an exalted place 
in the estimation of his fellow-citizens, no matter 
what his calling or profession, may receive one. 
All great Americans cannot be invited the same 
year, but many of them are bidden to each 
dinner, and, if death does not interfere, each of 
them, sooner or later, receives his invitation. 
Under these circumstances, there is little wonder 
that the reputation of these feasts should have 
attained such an honorable distinction, even here 
in an old city, famous for its banquets and 
hospitality. 

"There is not one of the many events which are 
commemorated in this city which is celebrated 
and signahzed with such perfection of good taste 
and such elegance of appointment as the anni- 
versary of the New England Society. The organi- 
zation has gone back into the annals of American 



272 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

history for its inspiration, and has selected an epi- 
sode which is invested with something more than 
the interest which attaches to the most eloquent 
of historic events. The landing of the Pilgrim 
Fathers is the motive of the anniversary celebra- 
tion of this time-honored New England Society; 
and the day is invariably made memorable in 
a manner worthy of the spirit and enterprise 
and hardihood of the storm-tossed pioneers who 
landed two hundred and sixty-five years ago on 
Plymouth Rock. There is something of the his- 
torical justice of events in the fact that at this 
day, the culture and refinement and wit and 
patriotism of this city should meet from year to 
year to revive the memories of a day that has 
been embalmed in the hearts of the American 
people by the lapse of over two and a half cen- 
turies." 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 273 

THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY DINNER 

OF THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

GIVEN AT THE MILLS HOUSE, CHARLESTON, S.C. 

DEC. 22, 1856 

Menu 

Oysters on Shell 
Soup 
Green Turtle Codfish Chowder Julien 

Baked Rock Fish, a la Chambord 

Salmon, Anchovy. Sauce 
Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce 
Turkey, Celery Sauce 

Chickens and Pork, Tongue 
Tenderloin Beef, with Mushrooms 
Ham, St. James Style 

Green Turtle Steak, Madeira Sauce 
Capon, with Truffles 
Boned Turkey, with Jelly, in form 
Pheasants, en Belle Vue 
Chicken, French Style 
Patti de Volaile, Decorated 
Bastelleon, a la Moderne 
Cold Game Pie, Lobster Salad 
Westphalia Ham, with Jelly 
Chicken Salad 
Patties, en Financiere 
Fried Oysters, Chicken Croquettes 
Pork and Beans, Old Style 
Olives, Anchovies, Celery, Sardines, Currant Jelly 
Cranberry Jelly, Lettuce, etc. 



274 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Baked, Mashed, and Fried Potatoes 
Sweet Potatoes, Asparagus 
Tomatoes, Spinach, Rice 
Onions, Beets, Turnips 
Croustade of Quail, a la Royale 

Chartreuse of Partridge, au feume de Gibiere 
Timbale, a la Parisienne 

FUet of Ducks, Bigorade Sauce 
Cassolette of Rice, a la Reine 
Mutton Chops, Neranise 
Supreme of Chickens, with TrufSes 
Salmi of Woodcock, on form 
Bondins, a la Richelieu, feume de Volaile 
Venison Steaks, Currant Jelly Sauce 

Oyster Patties 
Beef, Turkey stuffed with oysters 
Saddle of Venison, Jelly Sauce 
Capons, Saddle of Mutton, Cranberry Sauce 
Canvasback Ducks, English Wild Ducks, Grouse 
Wild Turkeys, Pheasants 
Pyramids of Crystallized Fruits 
Plum Pudding, Pumpkin Pies 
Mince Pies, Apple Pies 
Macaroons, Mainges 

French Cakes, Fancy Plates 
Madeira Jelly, Maraschino Jelly 
Omelet Souffle, Charlotte Russe 
Vanilla Ice Cream 
Oranges, Bananas, Apples, Prunes 

Almonds, Walnuts, Pecan Nuts, Filberts 

Raisins, Coffee, and Liquors 
Cigars Cigarettes 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 275 

EIGHTY-THIRD ANNUAL DINNER 

OF THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Given at the St. John Hotel 
December 23, 1902 

Menu 

Lynnhaven Oysters Sauterne 

Salted Almonds Cheese Sticks 

Clear Green Turtle, aux Quenelles Sherry 

Canape of Caviar, a la Russe 
Darne of Salmon, a la Chambord 
Pommes Uuchesse 
Celery Sliced Tomatoes Cucumbers Moselle 
Diamond Back Terrapin, a la New England Society 
Sweetbreads, Braise, a la Matignon 
Green Peas 
Vermont Turkey, Chestnut Dressing, Cranberry Sauce 
Candied Yams Rice Asparagus Points Claret 
Creme de Menthe Punch 
Roast Woodcock, a la Gastronome Champagne 
Lettuce Salad Pate de Foie Gras 

English Plum Pudding, Hard and Brandy Sauce 

Mince Pie Pumpkin Pie 

Charlotte Russe Biscuit Tortoni 

Assorted Fancy Cakes Champagne Jelly 

Nuts Raisins Fruits Apollinaris 

Roquefort Coffee 

Cigars Cigarettes 



276 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 



CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

THE VICTORY THEATER, CHARLESTON 

DECEMBER 21, I919 

AT 8:00 P.M. 

President: Reverend William Way 
Senior Vice-President: Charles W. Kollock, M.D. 
Junior Vice-President: Samuel Lapham 
Secretary and Treasurer: Thaddeus Street 
Committee on the Centennial Celebration: Reverend 

William Way, chairman; John E. Hessin, secretary; 

Charles W. Kollock, M.D.; Samuel Lapham; Matthew 

B. Barkley; George W. Williams; J. R. P. Ravenel, and 

B. H. Owen. 

ADDRESS OF DR. FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS 

Mr. President and Members of the New England 
Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

In the history of the American people, there 
has been no event more beautiful in meaning or 
of fairer promise than your celebration of the 
one hundredth anniversary of the New England 
Society in Charleston. 

The great things in human affairs do not come 
with heralding. They do not always come with 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 277 

observation. Their significance is seen at first 
only by those who think deeply upon the course 
of human progress, and not until much later on is 
it apprehended by the masses of mankind. 

As your president has told you, the early rela- 
tions between New England, Massachusetts espe- 
cially, and the people of South Carolina were fine 
and helpful. They so continued from the colonial 
period throughout the Revolutionary War; and 
during those days of anxiety thereafter which 
John Fiske has caUed the critical period in 
American history, when it was uncertain whether 
the fruits of struggle should be preserved. The 
writers and the public men of these states strove 
as they and fellow-soldiers had fought, to create 
out of the simple political elements of their day a 
free people that should grow strong and become 
respected among the nations of the world. They 
were bound together by ties of blood (these 
states of the North and the South), by ties of 
heritage and of interest. For a time one of the 
great tragedies of human history tore them 
apart, but kindly years have healed their wounds 
and reunited them in purpose and in affection. 
Today once more the people of New England and 
the people of this fair Southland are together 



278 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

planning their common future, as, a century ago, 
together their fathers planned. 

New England, which this Society was founded 
to revere and spiritually to reproduce and per- 
petuate, has perhaps too long been lauded as 
unique in the Providence of God and the progress 
of man. There is truth in that view and justice 
in the praise, and those of us who are descended 
from New England ancestry can never lose or 
deny our pride in the work that the Pilgrim and 
the Puritan did. Yet it is not wise to revert too 
often or to linger too long upon achievements of 
the past; and the word that as a New Englander 
I bring to you and offer tonight is that they best 
cherish the New England traditions and most 
faithfully carry on the work that the New Eng- 
landers of early days attempted to do, who pro- 
ceed now as those men proceeded then — who face 
a new day, forgetting the things which are behind 
and reaching forth, as the Apostle said, unto those 
things which are before. 

Why did Pilgrims and Puritans come to New 
England to undertake a struggle with nature and 
with man so terrible that those who lived through 
it could visualize and interpret their survival only 
in the words of Edward Johnson, of Woburn, as 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 279 

"the wonder-working Providence of Sion's Saviour 
in New England" ? 

They came and they endured because they 
were more than Pilgrims and Puritans, as the 
men of Virginia were more than Englishmen and 
the men of South Carolina were more than 
Englishmen and Huguenots. They came and 
they endured because they were men of western 
Europe, and above all else because they were 
men of modern and not of medieval history. For 
a time they fought strenuously against religious 
doctrines that they regarded as heretical. For a 
time they insisted upon uniting Church and 
State, and they permitted voting only by such as 
were in good standing in the one recognized 
ecclesiastical organization. But that was for a 
short time only. Exploration and an ever- 
changing experience widened their vision. From 
Boston and from Salem they traded and moved 
"to the eastward," to Strawberry Bank and to 
Dover, to Cape Porpoise and to Sagadahock. 
From Charlestown and Dorchester they went 
westward to Springfield and Windsor, Hartford 
and Wethersfield, and then again on, to commingle 
with the Dutch in the Hudson and Mohawk 
valleys. They came here, to commingle with the 



28o THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Huguenot strain, with its glorious traditions of 
liberty and of courage. So began the centuries' 
long march across a continent. 

So far as I can gather, these men cherished 
few regrets and gave little heed to memories. 
Therein perhaps they erred. It is necessary to 
know the past and to heed its warnings. But 
that was not their task. Their task was to 
create, and they created; it was to advance, and 
they advanced. The greatest thing that they did 
was not to transplant religious and political ideas, 
amazing and of priceless value as that achievement 
was. The greatest thing that they did was to 
bring here the spirit of men who were prepared to 
sacrifice everything that men have held dear in 
order that they might ever advance and ever 
create. That spirit has advanced and has created 
to the present day. 

The America of today is a product of that 
spirit. But it is a product so astounding, the 
America of today is so complex a thing, that we 
ask ourselves, What is the Americanism that now 
we demand one of another ? What is the ideal or 
what the destiny for which once more the nation 
has given sons and treasure? Do we know? 
Can we conceive it ? Is it to be something new, 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 281 

or only a carrying forward of glorious traditions ? 
Is it to be real, or only a form of words with 
which to play when we are confronted by new 
problems, because we must give ourselves the 
satisfaction of thinking that we think — of repeat- 
ing a formula, whether or not we have a program ? 

As I study the political ideas of New England 
and review the history of a nation that was born 
of revolution and reborn of civil war, I find 
myseh believing that the substantial things of 
Americanism are discernible in certain daring 
propositions that New England put to experi- 
mental test. 

New England demonstrated to her own satis- 
faction, she convinced America, and America 
has very nearly convinced the world, that four 
momentous achievements, undreamed of by the 
ancient or by the medieval mind, are possible to 
mankind. 

These four tried-out propositions are: one, that 
it is possible to educate the entire population of 
any civilized country; two, that it is possible to 
convince the entire population of any civilized 
country that it is better to do things by due 
process of law than to do them irregularly and by 
violence; three, that it is possible to govern 



282 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

human affairs in a democratic way instead of by 
class rule; four, that it is possible to confederate 
democratic states, as often it was possible to bind 
monarchic states, together in a working whole for 
the greater good of the confederated peoples. 

The educational experiment New England 
began when for the first time in human history 
she undertook by public authority to extend ele- 
mentary education to all her children. It was in 
1647 that Massachusetts ordered that "every 
township after the Lord hath increased them to 
the number of fifty householders shall appoint one 
to teach all children to read and write; and where 
any town shall increase to the number of one hun- 
dred families, they shall set up a grammar school, 
the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so 
far as they may be fitted for the university." 
The early experiments were slight, the results were 
nothing great, but the idea and the method were 
there, the intent and the persistence were there; 
and the common school, established by law and 
maintained out of public revenues, has been set 
up in every commonwealth of this Union. It is 
the corner stone upon which is reared a structure 
of education that includes in most states the high 
school and in many the state university. One of 




WILLIAM WAY 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 283 

the accepted things of our country, this New 
England plan of universal instruction by public 
authority and at public expense has now become 
one of the accepted things of France also, and of 
England. It will soon be one of the accepted 
things of Italy and of Spain, of South America 
and of the Eastern world. I do not suppose that 
the most optimistic man in Boston two cen- 
turies ago could have contemplated the possibility 
of a system of elementary education maintained 
at tax-payers' expense and substantially uniform 
over a continent, to say nothing of a civiHzed 
world. But that is what has grown out of the 
Puritan Ordinance of 1647. 

Next to our English speech and its matchless 
literature, our noblest heritage from our mother- 
land is our common law. I do not suppose that 
the most optimistic of all the men that came to 
colonial America could have imagined that in 
two and a hah centuries a population of one 
hundred million souls, occupying a stretch of 
continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and 
differing over a thousand things, would, never- 
theless, be in agreement upon one, and that no 
less a matter than their fundamental scheme of 
legal rights and public duties. Yet this has been 



284 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

achieved, and largely, I venture to think, because 
New England, not always law abiding herself, 
nevertheless from the earliest days strongly 
believed and insistently taught not only that it 
is more expedient and more self-respecting to live 
within the law and to carry on a collective struggle 
for existence in an orderly fashion but also (and 
this is my main point) that it is possible by 
teaching and the pressure of pubhc opinion to 
make practically all citizens of a democratic com- 
munity acknowledge this civic principle, and to 
make most of them understand it. It was a 
bold faith, but has it not been justified in its 
fruits? Together with the common school, the 
tradition of legality and of a social order founded 
in legality, of local liberty and rights of property 
safeguarded by due process of law, has become 
one of the things of course in our American 
civilization. And because it has, we are able 
today, looking forth upon the social turmoil of a 
depleted and distracted world and facing a flood 
of revolutionary ideas, without alarm or faltering 
to say: "Let us hear every criticism of estab- 
lished institutions that the disaffected can think 
of, but let the disaffected take notice and remem- 
ber that the trying out of their notions in so far 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 285 

as they may now or hereafter be put to experi- 
mental test shall not be by the methods that 
were attempted of late by the Boston police, not 
by the direct action beloved of anarchism, but 
shall be by due process of law." 

When New England began experimenting 
with town meetings, democracy on the great scale 
had not existed in the world, and throughout 
Europe it was discredited as of doubtful worth, 
even in local affairs. New England believed 
that it could successfully be extended and be 
made both strong enough for defense and en- 
lightened enough and just enough to make men 
free. Today a population of one hundred million 
souls is conducting its public affairs by methods 
rooted in universal suffrage, and America is in 
fact a democracy, as distinguished from class 
rule. 

This proposition, unhappily, requires explana- 
tion. As my observation goes, the elements of 
unrest in our country, the anarchistic and revolu- 
tionary groups, and such organizations as the 
Industrial Workers of the World, are ignorant of 
what democracy is. They conceive of it either 
as the overthrow of all government or as the sub- 
stitution of rule by the proletariat for the rule of 



286 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

a class-possessing property. Most of them, doubt- 
less, think of it as the substitution of proletarian 
rule for capitalistic rule. Frankly they avow their 
determination to make the substitution, to destroy 
an old order of society by violent revolution, and 
to set up in place of it a syndicalistic communism. 

There is this much justification for their think- 
ing. Until America successfully experimented 
with democracy, every government in the world 
was class rule of one or another kind. It was the 
rule of a priesthood, as in Egypt; or of a powerful 
ecclesiastical organization, like the Christian 
church of the Middle Ages; or of a local theocracy, 
like the earliest Puritan group in Massachusetts; 
or it was the rule of a royal family, as all the 
great monarchies have been; or the rule of a land- 
lord class, as feudalism was; or the rule of organ- 
ized industrial and commercial interests, as the 
government of England at times has been; or it 
has been the lawless rule of the proletarian mob 
or commune or soviet, as once it was in revolu- 
tionary France and as now it is in revolutionary 
Russia. 

In distinction from every kind of class rule, 
democracy is the political organization of an 
entire population. It comprises all elements, all 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 287 

classes, and expresses the mind of all individuals. 
In a democracy each duly qualified elector votes 
as an individual, according to his own intelligence 
and his own conscience, and not as a member of 
a church, as the first Puritans did; nor as a mem- 
ber of a propertied class, as the people of Rhode 
Island long did; nor as a member of any business 
organization, or of a trade union, or of any other 
group whatsoever. Democracy says that an 
entire population politically organized is greater 
than any part of it, and is supreme. By due 
process of law it determines what persons may 
vote, when they may vote, and by what methods. 
It declares that the interest of the whole people is 
higher than the interest of privilege, a declaration 
that the Bills of Rights of Massachusetts and 
Virginia made explicit; that it is higher than any 
ecclesiastical interest, a declaration which the 
federal Constitution has made explicit; that it is 
higher than any trade, labor, or professional 
interest, a declaration that Governor Coolidge 
lately made explicit and that the American people 
with unmistakable voice have confirmed. Such 
is the democracy that for more than one hundred 
years we have been creating in America. Such is 
the democracy that we shall continue to develop 



288 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and to protect. It is the will of a nation, con- 
scious of itself, organized as political power, and 
deriving its authority from individual minds and 
consciences, freely voting as they see fit. 

Her fourth great social experiment (fourth in 
logical enumeration but chronologically earlier) 
New England ventured when, in 1643, i^ dark 
hours of Indian war, the four colonies of Plymouth, 
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven 
bound themselves to one another in a league of 
representative democracies as the United Colonies 
of New England. Within this confederation the 
four constituent members were of equal power, 
but war expenses, it was agreed, should be 
apportioned according to the number of male 
inhabitants in each colony, a compromise that 
was destined to become the corner stone of our 
federal Constitution. And this league was for 
more than war, as appears in the highly signifi- 
cant further agreement that the judgments of the 
courts of law and probates of wills in each colony 
were to receive full faith and credit in every other. 

That New England league endured for fifty 
years. It was the model from which Benjamin 
Franklin in 1754 drew the outlines of his plan for 
a union of all the colonies, which, twenty years 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 289 

later, was achieved in the Revolutionary con- 
federation. From the elements of the confedera- 
tion Hamilton and his co-workers wrought the 
enduring structure of our federal Constitution. 

Let us admit that there were weaknesses in 
that great instrument. It left vital questions 
unanswered. Back of it lay differences of thought 
and of tradition, and of economic interest, which 
divided South from North. And so it came to 
pass that only through sorrow was understanding 
reached, and only by the dice of war was made 
decision upon which a future could be built. The 
decision was accepted. The Constitution, strong 
and elastic, as time has proven, is the compre- 
hensive political organization of forty-eight com- 
monwealths, among which is distributed, as their 
population, an indivisible American people. It 
is the organization of our co-operation, and it has 
enabled us to do marvelous things. Need we say 
more of it than that, under its authority and 
within its powers, a nation unprepared for war 
was able within one year to draft, equip, and 
drill, and send across the seas, a fighting army of 
two million men ? 

With these four experiments before us, we, the 
American people, with our inheritance of common 



290 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

and commingled blood, of one language and of 
one literature, of one legal tradition, and sharers 
in a glorious history, face a future full of the most 
perplexing problems that ever have vexed the 
soul of man. We shall be told that it is useless to 
try to uplift the human race, that the task is too 
great, too costly, and too discouraging, that some 
men of each breed can be educated, but not all. 
We shall be told that it is impossible to solve all 
problems by due process of law; that law is slow, 
not always just, not always practical; and that 
there are times when the conscientious man must 
ask himself whether he will be bound by the 
letter of the law or not. We shall be told that 
democracy is impractical, a dream, a vision not 
to be realized in a world of human beings that 
are by no means all men of character, by no 
means all men of intelligence. And, finally, we 
shall be told that already the nations are too 
large, and political organization unwieldy. Why, 
then, we shall be asked, dream of a federation of 
the world? How beheve that by a league of 
nations war can be prevented ? 

The answer to these objections and these 
questions is simple and it is this: these things 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 291 

were dreams, once. But dreamed they were, 
three centuries ago; and the dreaming fired imagi- 
nation and imagination quickened thought. Of 
thought experiment was born, and generation by- 
generation successful experiment has made con- 
verts, until today we of the New England strip 
may challenge the world to show that, in all 
human history from its beginnings in Egypt and 
in Babylonia down to the present hour, any other 
four ideas have in the same length of time won as 
many converts or achieved so much. 

Why, then, lose faith? Why, then, of all 
people in the world, should we of America lose 
faith, as from time to time we keep the anniver- 
saries of our inheritance ? 

I never see one of our tall steel buildings rising 
skyward without finding myself contemplating in 
fascination its essential structure. What is it? 

That structure is a towering frame of steel, it is 
a thing of posts and girders bolted and riveted. 
The enclosing walls of brick are but a mere pro- 
tection from the weather. They support nothing; 
they are supported. Between the floors are put 
coarse fireproofing materials, cinders, cement, 
and gravel. And when the floors are laid and 



292 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the steel is walled in, all manner of things go into 
the interior. There are put tiling, and wood 
that is but tinder, then paint and varnish. But 
the paint and the varnish are not the structure. 
The inflammable wood is not the structure. The 
coarse materials between the floors, the waUs of 
brick, are not the structure. The structure is 
that riveted frame of steel. 

Into the buflding of our nation has gone 
tempered steel, steel smelted in human suffering 
and roUed in the disciplining mills of God. It is 
the tested steel of the character, the intelligence, 
the faith, of Englishmen, of Scotchmen, of Hu- 
guenots, of HoUanders — character, intelligence, 
and faith selected from all the world for strength, 
for daring, and for endurance. Of that steel are 
the posts and the girders of the framework of our 
nation, bolted by hardship and riveted by war. 
Revolution may rock it. It may sway in the 
wrath of political storm. Earthquakes of calam- 
ity may shake it, or the red flare of anarchism may 
sear it. But fires will die down, the storm wfll 
abate, revolutions will fail, and our structure of 
steel will stand in its majesty throughout cen- 
turies to come, as it has stood through the 
centuries that are passed. 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 293 

THE CENTENNIAL DINNER 

CELEBRATED AT THE ST. JOHN HOTEL 
DECEMBER 22, 7 P.M. 

Stewards: Christian J. Larsen, chairman; William 
H. Cogswell; and Benjamin I. Simmons. 

THE SPEAKERS 

Reverend William Way 

Professor Franklin H. Giddings, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Reverend Loring W. Batten, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Colonel James Armstrong 

J. Rion McKissick, Esq. 

W. S. Currell, Ph.D., LL.D. 

J. W. Barnwell, Esq. 

THE GUESTS 

Rear Admiral F. E. Beatty, U.S.N. ; Major General 
H. G. Sharpe, U.S.A.; Professor F. H. Giddings, Columbia 
University, New York; Rear Admiral E. A. Anderson, 
Commandant of the Charleston Nav}^ Yard; Brigadier 
General J. D. Barrett, U.S.A.; The Reverend Dr. L. W. 
Batten, of the General Theological Seminary, New York; 
Dr. W. S. Currell, president of the University of South 
Carolina; Dr. Robert Wilson, Jr., dean of the Medical 
College of South Carolina; F. C. Peters, collector of the 
port of Charleston; Robert Lathan, editor of the Charles- 
ton News afid Courier; T. R. Waring, editor of the 
Charleston Evening Post; J. R. McKissick, editor of The 
Piedmont, Greenville, South Carolina; Colonel James 
Armstrong; P. A. Willcox, Esq., general solicitor of the 



294 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad; Surgeon Edgar Thompson, 
U.S.N. ; M. Rutledge Rivers, president of the St. Andrew's 
Society; W. Turner Logan, president of the Hibernian 
Society; Commander O. L. Cox, U.S.N. ; Commander 
J. W. Woodruff, U.S.N. ; Colonel 0. J. Bond, super- 
intendent of the South Carolina Military College; 
L. K. Legge; Major Alfred Huger; Captain M. M. 
Ramsey, U.S.N. ; Commander R. E. Pope, U.S.N. ; 
Colonel Glen E. Edgerton, U.S.A.; J. W. Barnwell; 
W. C. Miller; Julian Mitchell; W. C. Wade; Stewart 
Cooper; Lieutenant Commander Lorain Anderson, 
U.S.N. ; E. H. Pringle, Jr., vice-president of the Bank of 
Charleston; J.D.Lucas; Jenkins M. Robertson; E. Wil- 
loughby Middleton; Samuel Lapham, Jr.; David Bar- 
field; G. F. Lipscomb; J. Campbell Bissell; M. S. Cray- 
ton; John Strohecker; Wilbur L. Rodrigues, and J. M. 
Whitsitt. 

THE MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY 

G. J. Cherry W. B. Metts 

H. C. Gill H. P. WilUams 

F. K. Myers Chas. W. KoUock, M.D. 
W. K. McDowell J. R. Pringle 

G. F. von Kolnitz J. H. Young 
J. E. Hessin T. T. Hyde 

F. M. Robertson J. D. Newcomer 

C. M. Benedict L. W. Hickok 

H. F. Walker M. B. Barkley 

J. R. Simmons J. E. Smith 

J. E. Martin M. Triest 

H. W. Lochrey W. H. Cogswell 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 295 



C. F. Middleton 
A. J. Geer 
Wm. M. Bird 
Chr. J. Larsen 
Thaddeus Street 
Samuel Lapham 
Henry Buist 
John D. Fletcher 
J. L. Hacker 
Frank Burbidge 

A. C. Connelley 
Chas. Robertson 
J. E. Cogswell 
Jas. S. Simmons 

B. I. Simmons 
A. McL. Martin 
A. 0. Halsey 

J. R. Hanahan 
G. W. Williams 



J. R. P. Ravenel 
W. H. Dunkin 
M. V. Haselden 
Lloyd Ellison 
Wm. Burguson 
J. N. Schroder 

A. E. Baker, M.D. 
W. P. Carrington 
T. W. Passailaigue 
W. B. Wilbur 
Theo. J. Simons 

B. H. Owen 
Reverend William Way 
Thaddeus Street, Jr. 

J. S. Rhame, M.D. 
Phineas Kent 
John C. Simonds 
E. N. Wulbern 
E. E, Quincy 



Congratulatory greetings were received from 
the New England Society of New York, the New 
England Society of Brooklyn, the New England 
Society of Pennsylvania, the New England Asso- 
ciation of California, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, 
Colonel J. C. Hemphill, Honorable R. G. Rhett, 
and Dr. Yates Snowden. 

The governor of Massachusetts sent the 
following letter: 



296 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS 
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT 

State House, Boston, December 17, 1919 

Reverend William Way, President 
New England Society 
Charleston, S.C. 

My Dear Mr. Way: 

Your very kind invitation to attend the banquet cele- 
brating the one hundredth anniversary of your Society is 
received, for which I thank you. I should especially be 
pleased to visit Charleston. The early colonial and revo- 
lutionary history of Massachusetts and South Carolina 
was very marked by their co-operation with each other 
and it is my sincere desire that this ancient friendship and 
co-operation may always remain. There is more and 
more a tendency to forget our location and remember 
that we are all Americans. This should not, however, 
diminish the pride that New England has in its achieve- 
ments, nor the pride that South Carolina has in its own 
glorious history. If your Society can convey to your 
fellow-citizens in Charleston the sentiment of high regard 
which we here feel for them, you will be performing a 
most patriotic service. 

Very truly yours, 

Calvin Coolidge 

The foUowing is an editorial written by Robert 
Lathan and published in the Charleston News and 
Courier, December 24, 1919: 



OF CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 297 

A WORTHY CELEBRATION 

The centennial exercises just completed by the New 
England Society of Charleston have been in all respects 
worthy of the Society's high aims and splendid traditions. 
Professor Giddings said at the Victory Theater Sunday 
night that in his judgment the completion of its hundredth 
year by a New England Society in Charleston is one of 
the most striking facts in American history. Mr. Mel- 
ville E. Stone, of the Associated Press, following the visit 
which he paid to Charleston some years ago when he 
was the principal speaker at one of the New England 
annual dinners, declared that the fact that this Society 
continued its existence throughout the war between the 
states and that without the loss of a single member, was 
to his mind a singularly impressive thing. This was the 
only New England society in the South, it is interesting 
to learn, which, having been founded prior to the war 
between the states, outlasted the struggle. 

There are many notable features about the history of 
the New England Society of Charleston. The book 
which Mr. Way has written concerning it will unquestion- 
ably be an exceptionally valuable contribution to the social 
history of this community. In the hundred years of its 
existence the New England Society of Charleston has 
included in its membership many of the men whose 
names and records are numbered by the discerning as 
Charleston's richest possession. Its leaders have been 
leaders, many of them — not only in Charleston, but in 
the nation — in literature, in science, in art, in theology, 
in government, and in business. 

Mr. Joseph W. Barnwell in his brief remarks at the 
dinner Monday evening suggested that, so far as he knew, 



298 THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY 

the New England Society was the first organization of its 
kind in Charleston to bring to this city distinguished 
speakers from a distance for its annual affairs. In the 
half-century and more that this custom has obtained, 
some very great men have spoken under the auspices of 
the New England Society here and some very memorable 
utterances have been delivered. Daniel Webster in the 
height of his fame welcomed the opportunity to speak on 
one of these occasions, and in later years men like William 
Everett, Charles Francis Adams, and George Frisbie Hoar 
came to Charleston at the invitation of the New England 
Society that they might bring here messages which 
echoed throughout the South and the nation. 

The New England Society of Charleston has every 
right to be proud of the record it has made for itself in 
the first century of its existence. It can and should play 
an even larger part in the afifairs of this community and 
section in the years that lie ahead. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Act of Incorporation, 6 
Adams, Charles F., 269, 298 
Adams, Rev. W. H., 23 
Agassiz, Louis, 140 
Aiken, William, 190 
Allston, Washington, iii 
Alston, Governor, 28 
Anderson, Lorain, 294 
Anderson, Rear Admiral E. A., 

293 
Andrews, Loring, 37 
Apple ton, Dr., 75 
Armstrong, Col. James, 293 

Bailey, Henry, 190, 204, 269 
Baker, A. E., 295 
Barfield, David, 294 
Barkley, Matthew B., 276, 294 
Barnwell, J. W., 85, 270, 294, 297 
Barnwell, Robert W., 77 
Barrett, Brigadier General J. D., 

293 
Batten, Rev. Loring W., 293 
Beach, E. M., 189 
Beatty, Rear Admiral F. E., 

293 
Beech, Darwin, 45 
Bellinger, G. Duncan, 269 
Benedict, C. M., 294 
Bennett, Col. A. G., 164 
Bennett, James Gordon, 39 
Beimett, John, 270 
Benson, John H., 5 
Bernard, Horace, 5 



Bethune, George, 113 

Bird, Wm. M., 295 

Bishop, Samuel N., 5 

Bissell, J. Campbell, 294 

Bond, Col. O. J., 294 

Boston Advertiser, 262 

Boston Globe, 262, 264 

Boston Palladium, 37 

Bowen, Rev. C. J., 98 

Bowen, Right Rev. Nathaniel, 

29, 184 
Brawley, Judge W. H., 270 
Brewer, David J., 269 
Brewster, Charles Royal, 16, 151, 

269 
Bridge, Matthew, 5 
Brown, Mary, 159 
Bryan, George S., 175 
Bryan, J. P. K., 62, 175, 269 
Buffum, Arnold, 234 
Buist, Henry, 270, 295 
Buist, John Somers, 170 
Bunce, Lydia, 77 
Burbidge, Frank, 295 
Burguson, Wm., 295 
Butler, Dr. Nicholas Murray, 

295 

Calhoun, P. C, 56, 269 
Camp, A. Burnett Rhett, 72 
Campbell, James B., 20, 47, 131, 

238, 241, 246, 269 
Campbell, Rev. John, 47 
Carlisle, W. B., 239 



301 



302 



INDEX 



Carolina Coffee House, i, 22 
Carrington, W. P., 295 
Centennial Celebration, 276, 293 
Chadwick, Samuel, 5 
Chamberlain, Gov. D. H., 247, 

249, 269 
Charity, Committee on, 10, 16 
Charleston Daily Courier, i, 13, 

21, 29, 38, loi, III, 188, 243 
Charleston Mercury, 77 
Charleston News, 21, 45 
Charleston News and Courier, 

152, 166, 173, 249, 296 
Charleston Port Society, 9 
Cheney, E., Jr., 5 
Cherry, G. J., 294 
Cheves, 49 
Chicago Tribune, 264 
Child, James L., 5 
Christian Examiner, 80, 83, 99 
Circular Congregational Church, 

36 
City Gazette and Commercial 

Advertiser, 2 
Civil War, 211 
Clarke, Joseph, 5 
Climacteric year, i860, 212 
Cogswell, J. E., 295 
Cogswell, William H., 293, 294 
Coit, Jonathan, 5 
Cole, Rev. John T., 16 
Cole, Rev. Jonathan, 12, 16 
Confederate Home and College, 

61 
Confederate Memorial Day, 73 
ConneUey, A. C, 295 
Conner, Henry Workman, 142 
Conner, Gen. James, 254 
Cooper, Steward, 294 
Cox, O. L., 294 



Crafts, William, 5, 6, 8, 27, 84 
Crafts, William, Jr., 29, 84, 269 
Craig, Gov. Locke, 269 
Crayton, M. S., 294 
Crocker, Doddridge, 4, 6, 8, 18, 

32, 189 
Crocker, Francis Shaw, 3, 5 
Gumming, Joseph C, 270 
Currell, Dr. W. S., 269, 293 

Dalcho, Dr. Frederick, 38 

Dana, Dr. Daniel, 146 

Dana, Rev. William Coombs, 13, 

146, 269 
Davis, Jefferson, 50 
Dawkins, Thomas N., 190 
Dehon, Right Rev. Theodore, 

27, 184 
Depew, Chauncey, 62 
Dinners, Famous, 268 
Distinguished members, 75 
Dodd, George, 5 
Donations, Special, 12 
Duggan, I. C, 11 
Dunkin, Benjamin F., 5, 18, 19, 

22, 99, 122, 152, 240, 246, 269 
Dunkin, W. H., 295 

Edgerton, E. W., 16 
Edgerton, Col. Glen E., 294 
Edwards, Timothy, 5, 8 
Eggleston, George W., 5 
Eggleston, John, 5 
Elliot, Stephen, 77 
Ellison, Lloyd, 295 
ELmore, F. H., 190 
Epiphany, 8 
Episcopal Church, 181 
Everett, Edward, 99 
Everett, William, 269, 298 



INDEX 



303 



Faneuil, Mary, 113 
Ficken, John F., 270 
Finley, William P., 190 
Fleming, D. F., 16 
Forefathers' Day, 72, 106, 115, 

177, 238, 269 
Forster, Rev. Anthony M., 79, 

80, 104 
Foster, Nathan, 5 
Franklin, John, 56 
Fraser, Alexander, 32 
Fraser, Mary, 32 
Frothingham, Rev. P. R., 269 
Furness, Horace Howard, 78 

Gage, Alva, 156 

Gage, Judge G. W., 269 

Geer, A. J., 295 

Gibbes, George, s, 6, 8 

Gibbon, George, 5 

Giddings, Dr. Franklin H., 276, 

293, 297 
Gilchrist, Judge R. B., 189 
Gilchrist, R. G., 163 
Gildersleeve, Dr. Basil L.,184, 269 
GiU, H. C, 294 
Gilliland, W. H., 163 
Gilman, Rev. Samuel, 97, 101, 

219, 269 
Gilman, Zadock, 5 
Goodwin, John, 5 
Graham, F. J., 248 
Graves, John Temple, 269 
Grayson, William John, Jr., 96, 

190 

Green, John T., 248 

Gresham, Very Rev. J. Wilmer, 
270 

Guerry, Right Rev. William A., 
i8r, 269 



Hacker, J. L., 295 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 112 

Halsey, A. O., 295 

Hamilton, James, 190 

Hampton Legion, 1 70 

Hampton, Wade, 55 

Hanahan, J. R., 295 

Harvard, Fair, 109 

Haselden, M. V., 295 

Hastie, C. Norwood, 57 

Hastie, William Smith, 56 

Hayden, A. H., 14, 16 

Hayne, Robert Y., 203 

Hemphill, J. C., 270, 295 

Hessin, J. E., 270, 276, 294 

Hickok, L. W., 294 

Hill, E. J., 269 

Hoar, George F., 269, 298 

Holbrook, John E., 137, 269 

Holland Society of New York, 
61 

Holmes, J. E., 190 

Hop ton, Sarah, 27 

Howard Association of Charles- 
ton, 61 

Howe, Silas, 5 

Rowland, Benjamin J., 134 

Huger, Major Alfred, 294 

Huger, Benjamin, 7, 49 

Huguenot Church, 63 

Hunt, Benjamin Faneuil, 113, 
189, 192, 212, 269 

Hurlbut, Martin Luther, 75, 
269 

Hurlbut, Major-General Stephen 
Augustus, 83, 154 

Hurlbut, WiUiam Henry, 83 

Hutchinson, T. L., 190 

Hyde, T. T., 294 



304 



INDEX 



Jackson, President Andrew, 48 
Jones, Henry J., 5, 6 
Jones, Wiswall, 5 

Kent, Phineas, 295 
Kollock, Charles W., 276, 294 
Kolnitz, G. F. von, 270, 294 
Ku Klux trials, 176 

Lafayette, 112 
Lapham, Samuel, 276, 295 
Lapham, Samuel, Jr., 294 
Larsen, Christian J., 293, 295 
Lassiter, F. R., 269 
Lathan, Robert, 293, 296 
Lebby, Dr. Robert, 13, 14, 16, 17 
Legare, George S., 269 
Legare, Hugh S., 48, 85 
Legg, L. K., 294 
Leland, David W., 5, 18 
Lipscomb, G. F., 294 
Lochrey, H. W., 294 
Logan, W. Turner, 294 
Lovell, Josiah S., 5, 8 
Lowndes, William, 84 
Lucas, J. D., 294 

McAllister, M. Hall, 190 
Macbeth, Charles, 163, 164 
McDowell, W. K., 294 
McElroy, W. H., 270 
McKissick, J. Rion, 293 
Magnolia Cemetery, 13, 15, 23, 

62 
Mann, Gov. W. H., 269 
Manning, Joseph, 5, 6 
Martin, A. McL., 295 
Martin, J. E., 294 
Maxwell, Robert, 8, 12 
Mayflower, 22, 212 



Memminger, Rev. W. W., 270 
Metts, W. B., 294 
Middle ton, Arthur, 27 
Middleton, C. F., 294 
Middleton, E. Willoughby, 294 
Miller, W. C, 270, 294 
Mills House, 45 
Mills, John, 45 
Mills, Otis, 44, 242, 246 
Minott, Baxter O., 5 
Mitchell, Julian, 294 
Mitchell, Dr. S. C, 269 
Monroe, President James, 2, iii 
Morford, Margaret, 78 
Morris Island, 165 

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 

no, 113 
Moses, F. J., 247, 260 
Moultrie, Fort, 165 
Myers, F. K., 294 

National Academy of the Arts 
of Design, 112 

New England Society of Brook- 
lyn, 295 

New England Society of Charles- 
ton: actions of, from i860 to 
1865, 238; centennial cele- 
bration, 276; centennial din- 
ner, 293; date of organiza- 
tion, 1-4; dedication of 
monument, 22; dinner in 
honor of Daniel Webster, 
188; eighty-third annual din- 
ner, 275; orator of 1908 at, 
211; original members, 5; 
other sons, 184; reconstruc- 
tion, 246; sixty-first anni- 
versary, 70; thirty-seventh 
anniversary, 273 

New England Society in the 
City of New York, 4, 266, 
295 



INDEX 



305 



New England Society of Penn- 
sylvania, 295 

New Orleans Commercial Bulle- 
tin, 143 

New York Drawing Association, 
112 

New York Herald, 261 

New York Tribune, 98 

New York World, 83 

Newcomer, J. D., 294 

Noble, Patrick, 6 

Norris, Edward J., 16 

North American Review, 99 

Ogier, Dr. T. L., 138 
O'Neall, John B., 189 
Ordinance of Secession, 240 
Owen, B. H., 276. 295 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 28 

Parish, Daniel, 5 

Passailaigue, T. W., 295 

Patriot and Commercial Adver- 
tiser, I, 2 

Peabody, George, 31 

Peabody, Rev. Samuel, 98 

Pelzer, Francis J., 28 

Percival, Dr. James G., 150 

Perkins, Daniel, 5 

Perry, Gov. B. F., 150 

Peters, F. C., 293 

Petigru, James L., 49, 190, 207, 
269 

Pinckney, Castle, 165 

Pinckney, Rev. C. C., 174 

Pinckney, General Thomas, 112 

Pletcher, John D., 295 

Plummer Granite Company, 15, 
16 

Plymouth Rock, 3, 17, 22, 272 

Poinsett, 49 



Pope, R. E., 294 
Porter, Martha F., 166 
Potter, L. T., 16, 143 
Prentiss, Miss Washington S., 

130 
Presbyterian Church, 56, 60 
Prescott, George W., 5 
Presidents, The, 25 
Pringle, E. H., Jr., 294 
Pringle, J. R., 294 

Quincy, E. E., 295 
Quincy, Josiah, 269 

Ramsey, M. M., 294 
Randolph, Dr. Harrison, 270 
Ravenel, Daniel, 190, 276 
Ravenel, J. R. P., 295 
Read, John, 5, 16 
Read, John R., 168 
Reed, John, 5 
Reed, Col. J. P., 248 
Reynolds, Right Rev. Ignatius 

Aloysius, 190 
Rhame, J. S., 295 
Rhett, R. B., 190 
Rhett, R. Goodwyn, 270, 295 
Rice, William, 189 
Richards, Frederick, 14 
Rivers, Rutledge, 294 
Robertson, Charles, 295 
Robertson, Dr. F. M., 225, 269, 

294 
Robinson, Philip, 5 
Rodrigues, Wilbur L., 294 
RusseU, Alicia, 27 
Russell, Rev. John, 26 
Russell, Nathaniel, 3, 5, 12, 18, 

22, 25 
Russell, Sarah, 27 



3o6 



INDEX 



Rutledge, Col. B. H., 254 
Rutledge, Harriott Pinckney, 137 

St. Andrews Society, 24, 188 
St. Cecilia Society, 2, 27 
St. Michael's Church, 32, 45 
St. Philip's Church, 43 
Sassure, General de, 72 
Savage, Arthur, 5 
Scherer, Dr. J. A. B., 270 
Schroeder, J. N., 295 
Sharpe, Major-General H. G., 293 
Shepard, Prof. Charles Upham, 

148, 269 
Silliman, Prof. Benjamin, 148 
Simonds, John C, 295 
Simmons, Benjamin I., 293, 295 
Simmons, J. R., 294 
Simmons, Jas. S., 295 
Simons, Theo. J., 295 
Simonton, Judge C. H., 270 
Sims, William Gilmore, 12 
Sinkler, Huger, 270 
Smith, J. E., 295 
Snow, Albert, 11 
Snowden, Dr. Yates, 295 
Society of the Cincinnati, 2 
Southern Review, 86 
Spanish- American War, 176 
Sparks, Rev. Jared, 104 
Sprague, Roswell, 5 
Stone, Melville E., 211, 269, 297 
Storey, Joseph, 209 
Street, Thaddeus, 276, 295 
Strohecker, John, 294 
Stuart, John A., 77 
Sumter, Fort, 50, 165 

Talmage, Dr. DeWitt, 174 

Talmage, Van Nest, 172 



Taylor, Col. J. H., 189, 232, 
269 

Thayer, Isaac, 5 

Thompson, Edgar, 294 

Thwing, Edward, 12 

Townsend, J. B., 270 

Triest, M., 294 

Tunno, Adam, 27 

TurnbuU, R. J., 83 

Tyler, Joseph, 5 

Union Committee of South Caro- 
lina, 48 

Unitarian Church, 78, 99 

Unitarian Defendant, 80 

van Dyke, Dr. Henry, 175 
Vedder, Rev. Dr. Charles Stuart, 
3, II, 23, 54, 57, 60, 269 

Wade, W. C, 294 
Walter, Jerry, 5 
Warring, T. R., 270, 293 
Washington Light Infantry, 84, 

loS 
Way, Henry, 74 
Way, William, 276, 293, 295 
Webster, Daniel, 48, 188, 269, 

298 
West, Benjamin, no 
Whaley, Percival Hanahan, 180 
Whaley, P. H., Jr., 270 
Wheeler, Henry, 5 
Whipper, W. J., 247, 260 
Whitsitt, J. M., 294 
Wightman, Louisa A., 166 
Wilbur, W. B., 295 
WUlcox, P. A., 293 

Williams, George Walton, 159, 

163, 253, 276, 29s 
Williams, H. P., 294 



INDEX 



307 



Willington, A. S., 5, 6, 8, 12, 

18, 24, 37, loi, 188, 241 
Willington, Mrs. A. S., 242 
Willington, Josiah, 37 
Wilmer, Rev. C. B., 269 
Wilson, Dr. Robert, Jr., 293 
Winston, Judge F. D., 269 
Winthrop, John, 22 
Winthrop, Joseph, 3, 5, 6, 18, 31 Young, J. H., 294 



Winthrop, Robert C, 31 
Woodcock, Right Rev. C. E., 

269 
Woodruff, J. W., 294 
Woodward, Prof. F. C, 244, 269 
Woodward, Thomas G., 5 
Wulbern, E. N., 295 



82 



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